Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942.
A|
B|
C|
D|
E|
F|
G|
H|
I|
J|
K|
L|
M|
N|
O|
P|
Q|
R|
S|
T|
U|
V|
W|
X|
Y|
Z
A
Abailard, Peter: (1079-1142) Was born at Pallet in France; distinguished himself as a brilliant student of the trivium and quadrivium; studied logic with Roscelin and Wm. of Champeaux. He taught philosophy, with much emphasis on dialectic, at Melun, Corbeil, and the schools of St. Genevieve and Notre Dame in Paris. He was lecturing on theology in Paris c. 1113 when he was involved in the romantic and unfortunate interlude with Heloise. First condemned for heresy in 1121, he became Abbot of St. Gildas in 1125, and after returning to teach theology in Paris, his religious views were censured by the Council of Sens (1141). He died at Cluny after making his peace with God and his Church. Tactless, but very intelligent, Abailard set the course of mediaeval philosophy for two centuries with his interest in the problem of universals. He appears to have adopted a nominalistic solution, rather than the semi-realistic position attributed to him by the older historians. Chief works: Sic et Non (c. 1122), Theologia Christiana (c. 1124), Scito Teipsum (1125-1138) and several Logical Glosses (ed. B. Geyer, Abaelard's Philos. Schrift. BGPM, XXI, 1-3).
J. G. Sickes, Peter Abaelard (Cambridge, Eng., 1932). -- V.J.B.
Abdera, School of: Founded by the Atomist Democritus. Important members, Metrodorus of Chios and Anaxarchus of Abdera (teacher of Pyrrho, into whose hands the school leadership fell), thus inspiring Pyrrhonism. See Democritus, Pyrrhonism. -- E.H.
Abduction: (Gr. apagoge) In Aristotle's logic a syllogism whose major premiss is certain but whose minor premiss is only probable. -- G.R.M.
In Peirce: type of inference yielding an explanatory hypothesis (q.v.), rather than a result of deductive application of a "rule" to a "case" or establishment of a rule by induction.
Ab esse ad posse valet, a posse ad esse non valet consequential: Adage expressing the permissibility of arguing from facts to possibility and denying the validity of arguments proceeding from possibility to reality. -- J.J.R.
Abhasa, abhasana: (Skr.) "Shining forth", the cosmopsychological process of the One becoming the Many as described by the Trika (q.v.) which regards the Many as a real aspect of the ultimate reality or Parama Siva (cf. Indian Philosophy). Reflection, objectivity. -- K.F.L.
Abheda: (Skr. "not distinct") Identity, particularly in reference to any philosophy of monism which does not recognize the distinctness of spiritual and material, or divine and essentially human principles. -- K.F.L.
Abravanel, Don Isaac: Exegete and philosopher (1437-1508), was born in Lisbon, Portugal, emigrated to Toledo, Spain, and after the expulsion settled in Italy. He wrote a number of philosophical works, among them a commentary on parts of the Guide. He follows in most of his views Maimonides but was also influenced by Crescas. -- M.W.
Abravanel, Judah: Or Judah Leon Medigo (1470-1530), son of Don Isaac, settled in Italy after the expulsion from Spain. In his Dialoghi d'Amore, i.e., Dialogues about Love, he conceives, in Platonic fashion, love as the principle permeating the universe. It emanates from God to the beings, and from the beings reverts back to God. It is possible that his conception of universal love exerted some influence upon the concept of Amor Dei of Spinoza. -- M.W.
Absolute: (Lat. absolvere to release or set free) Of this term Stephanus Chauvin in the Lexicon Philosophicum, 1713, p2 observes: "Because one thing is said to be free from another in many ways, so also the word absolute is taken by the philosophers in many senses." In Medieval Scholasticism this term was variously used, for example: freed or abstracted from material conditions, hence from contingency; hence applicable to all being; without limitations or restrictions; simply; totally; independent; unconditionally; uncaused; free from mental reservation.
Much of this Medieval usage is carried over and expanded in modern philosophy. Absolute and Absolutely signify perfection, completeness, universality, non-relativity, exemption from limitation or qualification, unconditionality; hence also the ineffable, unthinkable, indeterminable; strictly, literally, without reservation, not symbolically or metaphorically. E.g. "Absolute truth," "absolute space," "absolute Ego," "absolutely unconditioned," "absolutely true." -- W.L.
Absolute Ego: In Fichte's philosophy, the Ego or Subject prior to its differentiation into an empirical (or historical) self and not-self. -- W.L.
Absolute Idealism: See Idealism, Hegel. -- W.L.
Absolute, The: (in Metaphysics) Most broadly, the terminus or ultimate referent of thought. The Unconditioned. The opposite of the Relative (Absolute). A distinction is to be made between the singular and generic use of the term.
A. While Nicholas of Cusa referred to God as "the absolute," the noun form of this term came into common use through the writings of Schelling and Hegel. Its adoption spread in France through Cousin and in Britain through Hamilton. According to Kant the Ideas of Reason seek both the absolute totality of conditions and their absolutely unconditioned Ground. This Ground of the Real Fichte identified with the Absolute Ego (q.v.). For Schelling the Absolute is a primordial World Ground, a spiritual unity behind all logical and ontological oppositions, the self-differentiating source of both Mind and Nature. For Hegel, however, the Absolute is the All conceived as a timeless, perfect, organic whole of self-thinking Thought. In England the Absolute has occasionally been identified with the Real considered as unrelated or "unconditioned" and hence as the "Unknowable" (Mansel, H. Spencer). Until recently, however, it was commonly appropriated by the Absolute Idealists to connote with Hegel the complete, the whole, the perfect, i.e. the Real conceived as an all-embracing unity that complements, fulfills, or transmutes into a higher synthesis the partial, fragmentary, and "self-contradictory" experiences, thoughts, purposes, values, and achievements of finite existence. The specific emphasis given to this all-inclusive perfection varies considerably, i.e. logical wholeness or concreteness (Hegel), metaphysical completeness (Hamilton), mystical feeling (Bradley), aesthetic completeness (Bosanquet), moral perfection (Royce). The Absolute is also variously conceived by this school as an all-inclusive Person, a Society of persons, and as an impersonal whole of Experience.
More recently the term has been extended to mean also
(a) the All or totality of the real, however understood, and
(b) the World Ground, whether conceived idealistically or materialistically, whether pantheistically, theistically, or dualistically. It thus stands for a variety of metaphysical conceptions that have appeared widely and under various names in the history of philosophy.
In China: the Wu Chi (Non-Being), T'ai Chi (Being), and, on occasion, Tao. In India: the Vedantic Atman (Self) and Brahman (the Real), the Buddhist Bhutatathata (indeterminate Thatness), Vignaptimatra (the One, pure, changeless, eternal consciousness grounding all appearances), and the Void of Nagarjuna.
In Greece: the cosmic matrix of the Ionians, the One of the Eleatics, the Being or Good of Plato, the World Reason of Stoicism, the One of Neo-Platonism.
In patristic and scholastic Christianity: the creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).
In modern thought: the Substance of Descartes and Spinoza, the God of Malebranche and Berkeley, the Energy of materialism, the Space-Time of realism, the Pure Experience of phenomenalism, the ding-an-sich (q.v.) of Kant.
B. Generically "an absolute" or "the absolute" (pl. "absolutes") means
- the real (thing-in-itself) as opposed to appearance;
- substance, the substantival, reals (possessing aseity or self-existence) as opposed to relations;
- the perfect, non-comparative, complete of its kind;
- the primordial or uncaused;
- the independent or autonomous.
Logic.
- Aristotelian logic involves such absolutes as the three laws of thought and changeless, objectively real classes or species,
- In Kantian logic the categories and principles of judgment are absolutes, i.e. a priori, while the Ideas of reason seek absolute totality
and unity,
- In the organic or metaphysical logic of the Hegelian school, the Absolute is considered the ultimate terminus, referent, or subject of every judgment.
Ethics and Axiology. Moral and axiological identified with the Real
values, norms, principles, maxims, laws are considered absolutes when universally valid objects of acknowledgment, whether conditionally or unconditionally (e.g. the law of the best possible, the utilitarian greatest happiness principle, the Kantian categorical imperative).
Aesthetics. Aesthetic absolutes are standards, norms, principles of aesthetic taste considered as objective, i.e. universally valid. -- W.L.
Absolutism: The opposite of Relativism.
- Metaphysics: the theory of the Absolute (q.v.).
- Epistemology: the doctrine that objective or absolute, and not merely relative and human, truth is possible.
- Axiology: the view that standards of value (moral or aesthetic) are absolute, objective, superhuman, eternal
- Politics: Cult of unrestricted sovereignty located in the ruler. -- W.L.
Absolutistic Personalism: The ascription of personality to the Absolute. -- R.T.F.
Absorption: The name law of absorption is given to either of the two dually related theorems of the propositional calculus,
[p ∨ pq] ≡ p, p[p ∨ q] ≡ p,
or either of the two corresponding dually related theorems of the algebra of classes,
a ∪ (a ∩ b) = a, a ∩ (a ∪ b) = a.
Any valid inference of the propositional calculus which amounts to replacing A ∨ AB by A, or A[A ∨ B] by A, or any valid inference of the algebra of classes which amounts to replacing
A ∪ (A ∩ B) by A, or A ∩ (A ∪ B) by A,
is called absorption.
Whitehead and Russell (Principia Mathematica) give the name law of absorption to theorem of the propositional calculus,
[p ⊃ q] ≡ [p ≡ pq].
-- A.C.
Abstract: (Lat. ab, from + trahere, to draw) A designation applied to a partial aspect or quality considered in isolation from a total object, which is, in contrast, designated concrete. -- L.W.
Abstracta: Such neutral, purely denotative entities as qualities, numbers, relations, logical concepts, appearing neither directly nor literally in time. (Broad) -- H.H.
Abstractio imaginationis: According to the Scholastics a degree of abstraction below that of reason and above that of the senses, which do abstract from matter, but not from the presence of matter, whereas the imagination abstracts even from the presence of matter, but not from its appendices, or sensible qualities. -- J.J.R.
Abstractio intellectus seu rationis: According to the Scholastics the highest degree of abstraction is that of reason which abstracts not only matter and its presence, but also from its appendices, that is, its sensible conditions and properties, considering essence or quiddity alone. -- J.J.R.
Abstraction: (Lat. ab, from + trahere, to draw) The process of ideally separating a partial aspect or quality from a total object. Also the result or product of mental abstraction. Abstraction, which concentrates its attention on a single aspect, differs from analysis which considers all aspects on a par. -- L.W.
In logic: Given a relation R which is transitive, symmetric, and reflexive, we may introduce or postulate "new elements corresponding to the members of the field of R, in such a way that the same new element corresponds to two members x and y of the field of R if and only if xRy (see the article relation). These new elements are then said to be obtained by abstraction with respect to R. Peano calls this a method or kind of definition, and speaks, e.g., of cardinal numbers (q.v.) as obtained from classes by abstraction with respect to the relation of equivalence -- two classes having the same cardinal number if and only if they are equivalent.
Given a formula A containing a free variable, say x, the process of forming a corresponding monadic function (q.v.) -- defined by the rule that the value of the function for an argument b is that which A denotes if the variable x is taken as denoting b -- is also called abstraction, or functional abstraction. In this sense, abstraction is an operation upon a formula A yielding a function, and is relative to a particular system of interpretation for the notations appearing in the formula, and to a particular variable, as x. The requirement that A shall contain x as a free variable is not essential: when A does not contain x as a free variable, the function obtained by abstraction relative to x may be taken to be the function whose value, the same for all arguments, is denoted by A.
In articles herein by the present writer, the notation λx[A] will be employed for the function obtained from A by abstraction relative to (or, as we may also say, with respect to) x. Russell, and Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica, employ for this purpose the formula A with a circumflex ˆ placed over each (free) occurrence of x -- but only for propositional functions. Frege (1893) uses a Greek vowel, say ε, as the variable relative to which abstraction is made, and employs the notation
ε(A) to denote what is essentially the function in extension (the "Werthverlauf" in his terminology) obtained from A by abstraction relative to ε.
There is also an analogous process of functional abstraction relative to two or more variables (taken in a given order), which yields a polyadic function when applied to a formula A.
Closely related to the process of functional abstraction is the process of forming a class by abstraction from a suitable formula A relative to a particular variable, say x. The formula A must be such that (under the given system of interpretation for the notations appearing in A) λx[A] denotes a propositional function. Then x∋(A) (Peano), or xˆ (A) (Russell), denotes the class, determined by this propositional function. Frege's ε (A) also belongs here, when the function corresponding to A (relatively to the variable ε) is a propositional function.
Similarly, a relation in extension may be formed by abstraction from a suitable formula A relative to two particular variables taken in a given order. -- A.C.
- Scholz and Schweitzer,
- Die sogenannten Definitionen durch Abstraktion, Leipzig, 1935.
- W. V. Quine,
- A System of Logistic, Cambridge, Mass., 1934.
- A. Church,
- review of the preceding, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 4l (1935), pp. 498-603.
- W. V. Quine,
- Mathematical Logic, New York, 1940.
In psychology: the mental operation by which we proceed from individuals to concepts of classes, from individual dogs to the notion of "the dog." We abstract features common to several individuals, grouping them thus together under one name.
In Scholasticism: the operation by which the mind becomes cognizant of the universal (q.v.) as represented by the individuals. Aristotle and Thomas ascribe this operation to the active intellect (q.v.) which "illuminates" the image (phantasm) and disengages from it the universal nature to be received and made intelligible by the possible intellect. -- R.A.
Abstractionism: (Lat. ab, from + trahere, to draw) The illegitimate use of abstraction, and especially the tendency to mistake abstractions for concrete realities. Cf. W. James, The Meaning of Truth, ch XIII. Equivalent to A. N. Whitehead's "Fallacy of misplaced concreteness." -- L.W.
Abstractum (pl. abstracta): (Lat ab + trahere, to draw) An abstractum, in contrast to a concretum or existent is a quality or a relation envisaged by an abstract concept (e.g. redness, equality, truth etc.). The abstractum may be conceived either as an ideal object or as a real, subsistent universal. -- L.W.
Ab universali ad particulare valet, a particulari ad universale non valet consequentia: Adage stating the validity of arguments making the transition from the general to the particular and denying the permissibility of the converse process. -- J.J.R.
Academy: (Gr. akademia) A gymnasium in the suburbs of Athens, named after the hero Academus, where Plato first taught; hence, the Platonic school of philosophy. Plato and his immediate successors are called the Old Academy; the New Academy begins with Arcesilaus (c. 315-c. 241 B.C.), and is identified with its characteristic doctrine, probabilism (q.v.). -- G.R.M.
Accident: (Lat. accidens) (in Scholasticism) Has no independent and self-sufficient existence, but exists only in another being, a substance or another accident. As opposed to substance the accident is called praedicamentale; as naming features of the essence or quiddity of a being accidens praedicabile. Accidents may change, disappear or be added, while substance remains the same. Accidents are either proper, that is necessarily given with a definite essence (thus, the "faculties of the soul" are proper accidents, because to sense, strive, reason etc., is proper to the soul) or non-proper, contingent like color or size. -- R.A.
In Aristotelian logic, whatever term can be predicated of, without being essential or peculiar
to the subject (q.v.). Logical or predicable (q.v.) -- opposed to property (q.v.) -- is that quality which adheres to a subject in such a manner that it neither constitutes its essence nor necessarily flows from its essence; as, a man is white or learned.
Physical or predicamental (q.v.) -- opposed to substance (q.v.) -- that whose nature it is to exist not in itself but in some subject; as figure, quantity, manner.- -- H.G.
Accidentalism: The theory that some events are undetermined, or that the incidence of series of determined events is unpredictable (Aristotle, Cournot). In Epicureanism (q.v.) such indeterminism was applied to mental events and specifically to acts of will. The doctrine then assumes the special form: Some acts of will are unmotivated. See Indeterminism. A striking example of a more general accidentalism is
Charles Peirce's Tychism (q.v.). See Chance, Contingency. -- C.A.B.
Acervus argument: A Sophistical argument to the effect that, given any number of stones which are not sufficient to constitute a heap, one does not obtain a heap by adding one more -- yet eventually, if this process is repeated, one has a heap. -- C.A.B.
Achilles argument: Zeno of Elea used a reductio ad absurdum argument against the possibility of motion. He urged that if we assume it possible we are led to the absurdity that Achilles, the fastest runner in Greece, could not catch a proverbially slow tortoise. The alleged grounds for this are that during the time, t1 - t2, which it
takes Achilles to traverse the distance between his position and that of the tortoise at time t1, the latter even at his slow rate of speed would have moved on a finite distance farther. -- C.A.B.
Cf. B. Russell, Scientific Method in Philosophy; Lewis Carroll, "Achilles and the Tortoise," Mind.
Acosmism: (Gr. kosmos, world) Theory of the non-existence of an external, physical world.
See Subjective Idealism. -- W.L.
Acquaintance, Knowledge by: (Lat. adcognitare, to make known) The apprehension of a quality, thing or person which is in the direct presence of the knowing subject. Acquaintance, in the strict sense, is restricted to the immediate data of experience but is commonly extended to include the things or persons perceived by means of such data. See Description, Knowledge by. -- L.W.
Acroamatic: Communicated orally. Applied especialy to Aristotle's more private teachings to his select advanced students. Hence, esoteric, abstruse. -- C.A.B.
Act: (in Scholasticism)
(1) Operation; as, intellect's act. In this sense, it is generally referred to as second act (see below).
(2) That which determines or perfects a thing; as rationality perfects animality.
Commanded: An act, originating in the will but executed by some other power; as walking.
Elicited: The proper and immediate act of the will, as love or hate.
First: (1) The prime form of a thing, in the sense of its essence or integrity. The second act is its operation. Thus the physical evil of blindness is the absence of the first act, i.e., a perfection due to man's integrity; while the moral evil of sin is an absence of the second act, i.e., a perfection demanded by righteous operation. (2) First act may also designate the faculty or principle of operation, as the will; while second act stands for its operations.
Human: (humanus) Deliberate act; e.g. painting.
Of Man: (hominis) Indeliberate act; e.g. digestion. Opposed to passive or subjective potency (q.v.).
Formal: A substantial or accidental form thought of as determining a thing to be what it is rather than to be something else. E.g. the substantial form of fire determines the composite in which it exists, to be fire and nothing else. Likewise the accidental form of heat determines a body to be warm rather than cold.
Informative: Form, or that which is like a form in some composite, e.g. the soul in man or knowledge in the intelligent soul. -- H.G.
Act-character: (Ger. Aktcharakter) In Husserl: Intentionality. -- D.C.
Action: (in Scholasticism) Immanent: The terminus is received in the agent, as in a subject; as contemplation.
Transient: The terminus is received in a
subject distinct from the agent; as ball-throwing.
-- H.G.
Activism: (Lat. activus, from agere, to act) The philosophical theory which considers activity, particularly spiritual activity, to be the essence of reality. The concept of pure act (actus purus) traceable to Aristotle's conception of divinity, was influential in Scholastic thought, and persists m Leibniz, Fichte and modern idealism. -- L.W.
Negatively, a repudiation of the intellectualistic persuasion that an adequate solution of the truth problem can be found through an abstract intellectual inquiry. Positively, a view of action as the key to truth, similar to Fichte's view. The true and sound standard of action is an independent spiritual life, independent in bringing the world .and life in accord with its values. Spiritual life grows by the active aid of human cooperation to ever higher dimensions. Spiritual being is achieved by the vital deeds of individuals. (Eucken) -- H.H.
In the Personalistic sense activism applies not only to the continuous creative willing which underlies all reality but also to knowledge which calls for an unceasing divine activity which is a sort of occasionalism. (Malebranche: Recherche de la verite, Book I,, Chap. XIV.) Charles Secretan: "To be is to act." -- R.T.F.
Act Psychology: (Lat. actum, a thing done) A type of psychology traceable to F. Brentano, Psychologte vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874) which considers the mental act (e.g. the act of sensing a red color patch) rather than the content (e.g. the red color) the proper subject matter of psychology. (See Intentionalism.) -- L.W.
Acts: In ethics the main concern is usually said to be with acts or actions, particularly voluntary ones, in their moral relations, or with the moral qualities of acts and actions. By an act or action here is meant a bit of behavior or conduct, the origination or attempted origination of a change by some agent, the execution of some agent's choice or decision (so that not acting may be an act). As such, an act is often distinguished from its motive, its intention, and its maxim on the one hand, and from its consequences on the other, though it is not always held that its moral qualities are independent of these. Rather, it is frequently held that the rightness of an act, or its moral goodness, or both, depend at least in part on the character or value of its motive, intention, maxim, or consequences, or of the life or system of which it is a part. Another question concerning acts in ethics is whether they must be free (in the sense of being partially or wholly undetermined by previous causes), as well as voluntary, in order to be moral, and, if so, whether any acts are free in this sense. See Agent. -- W.K.F.
Actual: In Husserl: see Actuality.
Actual: (Lat. actus, act) 1. real or factual (opposed to unreal and apparent) 2. quality which anything possesses of having realized its potentialities or possibilities (opposed to possible and potential). In Aristotle: see Energeia.
Actuality: In Husserl: 1. (Ger. Wirklichkeit) Effective individual existence in space and time, as contrasted with mere possibility. 2. (Ger. Aktualität) The character of a conscious process as lived in by the ego, as contrasted with the "inactuality" of conscious processes more or less far from the ego. To say the ego lives in a particular conscious process is to say the ego is busied with the object intended in that process. Attending is a special form of being busied. -- D.C.
Actuality: The mode of being in which things affect or are affected. The realm of fact; the field of happenings. Syn. with existence, sometimes with reality. Opposite of: possibility or potentiality. See Energeia. -- J.K.F.
Actus Purus: See Activism. -- L.W.
Ad hoc: A dubious assumption or argument arbitrarily introduced as explanation after the fact.
Adeism: Max Müller coined the term which means the rejection of the devas, or gods, of ancient India; similar to atheism which denies the one God. -- J.J.R.
Adequation: (Ger. Adäquation) In Husserl: verification; fulfilment. -- D.C.
(Lat. adequatio) In Aquinas: relation of truth to being.
Adhyatman: (Skr. adhi, over and atman, s.v.) A term for the Absolute which gained popularity with the reading of the Bhagavad Gita (cf. 8.3) and which Ralph Waldo Emerson rendered appropriately "Oversoul" (cf. his essay The Oversoul). -- K.F.L.
Adiaphora: (Gr. indifferent) A Stoic term designating entities which are morally indifferent. -- C.A.B.
Adler, Alfred: (1870-1937) Originally a follower of Freud (see Psychoanalysis; Freud), he founded his own school in Vienna about 1912. In contrast to Freud, he tended to minimize the role of sexuality and to place greater emphasis on the ego. He investigated the feelings of inferiority resulting from organic abnormality and deficiency and described the unconscious attempt of the ego to compensate for such defects. (Study of Organic Inferiority and its Psychical Compensations, 1907). He extended the concept of the "inferiority complex" to include psychical as well as physical deficiencies and stressed the tendency of "compensation" to lead to over-correction. (The Neurotic Constitution, 1912; Problems of Neurosis, 1930.) -- L.W.
Adoptionism: A christological doctrine prominent in Spain in the eighth century according to which Christ, inasmuch as He was man, was the Son of God by adoption only, acknowledging, however, that inasmuch as He was God, as was also the Son of God by nature and generation. The Church condemned the teaching. -- J.J.R.
Advaita: (Skr. "non-duality") The Vedantic (q.v.) doctrine of monism advocated by Sankara (q.v.) which holds the Absolute to be personal in relation to the world, especially the philosophically untutored, but supra-personal in itself (cf. nirguna, saguna); the world and the individual to be only relatively, or phenomenally, real; and salvation to consist in insight or jnana (q.v.) after dispelling the maya (q.v.) of separateness from the divine. -- K.F.L.
Adventitious Ideas: Those Ideas which appear to come from without, from objects outside the mind. Opposite of innate ideas. Descartes' form of the ontological argument for God was built upon the notion of adventitious Ideas. -- V.F.
Aeon: According to the Gnostics a being regarded as a subordinate heavenly power derived from the Supreme Being by a process of emanation. The totality of aeons formed the spiritual world which was intermediary between the Deity and the material world of sensible phenomena, which was held to be evil. -- J.J.R.
Aequilibrium indifferentiae: The state or condition of exact balance between two actions, the motives being of equal strength. Thomas Aquinas
held that in such a condition "actus haberi non potest, nisi removeatur indifferentia." This is effected by a determination ab intrinseco, or ab extrinseco, which disturbs the equipoise and makes it possible for the agent to act. -- J.J.R.
Aesthetic Judgment: (German aesthetische Urteilskraft) The power of judgment exercised upon data supplied by the feeling or sense of beauty. Kant devotes the first half of the Critique of Judgment to a "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment." (See Kantianism and Feeling.) -- O.F.K.
On the origin of the term, see Aesthetics.
Aesthetics: (Gr. aesthetikos, perceptive) Traditionally, the branch of philosophy dealing with beauty or the beautiful, especially in art, and with taste and standards of value in judging art. Also, a theory or consistent attitude on such matters. The word aesthetics was first used by Baumgarten about 1750, to imply the science of sensuous knowledge, whose aim is beauty, as contrasted with logic, whose aim is truth. Kant used the term transcendental aesthetic in another sense, to imply the a priori principles of sensible experience. Hegel, in the 1820's, established the word in its present sense by his writings on art under the title of Aesthetik.
Aesthetics is now achieving a more independent status as the subject (whether it is or can be a "science" is a disputed issue) which studies (a) works of art, (b) the processes of producing and experiencing art, and (c) certain aspects of nature and human production outside the field of art -- especially those which can be considered as beautiful or ugly in regard to form and sensory qualities. (E.g., sunsets, flowers, human beings, machines.)
While not abandoning its interest in beauty, artistic value, and other normative concepts, recent aesthetics has tended to lay increasing emphasis on a descriptive, factual approach to the phenomena of art and aesthetic experience. It differs from art history, archeology, and cultural history in stressing a theoretical organization of materials in terms of recurrent types and tendencies, rather than a chronological or genetic one. It differs from general psychology in focusing upon certain selected phases in psycho-physical activity, and on their application to certain types of objects and situations, especially those of art. It investigates the forms and characteristics of art, which psychology does not do. It differs from art criticism in seeking a more general, theoretical understanding of the arts than is usual in that subject, and in attempting a more consistently objective, impersonal attitude. It maintains a philosophic breadth, in comparing examples of all the arts, and in assembling data and hypotheses from many sources, including philosophy, psychology, cultural history, and the social sciences. But it is departing from traditional conceptions of philosophy in that writing labelled "aesthetics" now often includes much detailed, empirical study of particular phenomena, instead of restricting itself as formerly to abstract discussion of the meaning of beauty, the sublime, and other categories, their objective or subjective nature, their relation to pleasure and moral goodness, the purpose of art, the nature of aesthetic value, etc. There has been controversy over whether such empirical studies deserve to be called "aesthetics", or whether that name should be reserved for the traditional, dialectic or speculative approach; but usage favors the extension in cases where the inquiry aims at fairly broad generalizations.
Overlapping among all the above-mentioned fields is inevitable, as well as great differences in approach among individual writers. Some of these stress the nature and varieties of form in art, with attention to historic types and styles such as romanticism, the Baroque, etc., and in studying their evolution adopt the historian's viewpoint to some extent. Some stress the psychology of creation, appreciation, imagination, aesthetic experience, emotion, evaluation, and preference. Their work may be classed as "aesthetics", "aesthetic psychology", or "psychology of art". Within this psychological group, some can be further distinguished as laboratory or statistical psychologists, attempting more or less exact calculation and measurement. This approach (sometimes called "experimental aesthetics") follows the lead of Fechner, whose studies of aesthetic preference in 1876 helped to inaugurate modern experimental psychology as well as the empirical approach to aesthetics. It has dealt less with works of art than with preference for various arbitrary, simplified linear shapes, color-combinations and tone-combinations.
If the term "experimental" is broadly understood as implying a general mode of inquiry based on observation and the tentative application of hypotheses to particular cases, it includes many studies in aesthetics which avoid quantitative measurement and laboratory procedure. The full application of scientific method is still commonly regarded as impossible or unfruitful in dealing with the more subtle and complex phenomena of art. But the progress of aesthetics toward scientific status is being slowly made, through increasing use of an objective and logical approach instead of a dogmatic or personal one, and through bringing the results of other sciences to bear on aesthetic problems. Recent years have seen a vast increase in the amount and variety of artistic data available for the aesthetician, as a result of anthropological and archeological research and excavation, diversified museum collections, improved reproductions, translations, and phonograph records. -- T.M.
Aetiology: (Gr. aitiologeo, to inquire into) An inquiry into causes. See Etiology. -- V.F.
Aeviternity: (Lat. aevum, never-ending time) Eternity conceived as a whole, apart from the flux of time; an endless temporal medium in which objects and events are relatively fixed. -- R.B.W.
Affect: (Lat. ad + facere, to do) The inner motive as distinquished from the intention or end of action. Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, bk. III. -- L.W.
Affective: (Lat. affectio, from afficere, to affect)
The generic character supposedly shared by pleasure, pain and the emotions as distinguished from the ideational and volitional aspects of consciousness. See Affect. -- L.W.
Affinity (chemical): A potential of chemical energy; driving force; attraction. The term should be defined rigorously to mean the rate of change of chemical energy with changes in chemical mass. -- W.M.M.
Affirmation of the consequent: The fallacy of
affirmation of the consequent is the fallacious inference from B and A ⊃ B to A. The law of affirmation of the consequent is the theorem of the propositional calculus, q ⊃ [p ⊃ q].
-- A. C.
Affirmative proposition: In traditional logic, propositions A, I were called affirmative, and E, O, negative (see logic, formal, § 4). It is doubtful whether this distinction can be satisfactorily extended to propositions (or even to sentences) generally. -- A.C.
A fortiori: A phrase signifying all the more; applied to something which must be admitted for a still stronger reason. -- J.J.R.
Agama: (Skr.) One of a number of Indian treatises composed since the 1st cent. A.D. which are outside the Vedic (q.v.) tradition, but are regarded authoritative by the followers of Vishnuism, Shivaism, and Shaktism. Amid mythology, epic and ritualistic matter they contain much that is philosophical. -- K.F.L.
Agathobiotik: A good life or the good life.
-- C.A.B.
Agathology: (Gr.) The science of the good.
-- C.A.B.
Agent: In ethics an agent is always a person who is acting, or has acted, or is contemplating action. Here it is usually held that to be a moral agent, i.e. an agent to whom moral qualities may be ascribed and who may be treated accordingly, one must be free and responsible, with a certain maturity, rationality, and sensitivity -- which normal adult human beings are taken to have. Ethics is then concerned to determine when such an agent is morally good or virtuous, when morally bad or vicious, or, alternatively, when he is acting rightly and when wrongly, when virtuously and when viciously. See Act. -- W.K.F.
Agglutination: (Lat. ad + glutinare, to paste) Philologically, a method of formation in language whereby a modification of meaning or of relation is given to a word by adherence or incorporation of distinct parts or elements.
-- H.H.
Aggregate: 1. In a general sense, a collection, a totality, a whole, a class, a group, a sum, an agglomerate, a cluster, a mass, an amount or a quantity of something, with certain definite characteristics in each case.
2. In Logic and Mathematics, a collection, a manifold, a multiplicity, a set, an ensemble, an assemblage, a totality of elements (usually numbers or points) satisfying a given condition or subjected to definite operational laws. According to Cantor, an aggregate is any collection of separate objects of thought gathered into a whole;
or again, any multiplicity which can be thought as one; or better, any totality of definite elements bound up into a whole by means of a law. Aggregates have several properties: for example, they have the "same power" when their respective elements can be brought into one-to-one correspondence; and they are "enumerable" when they have the same power as the aggregate of natural numbers. Aggregates may be finite or infinite; and the laws applying to each type are different and often incompatible, thus raising difficult philosophical problems. See One-One; Cardinal Number; Enumerable. Hence the practice to isolate the mathematical notion of the aggregate from its metaphysical implications and to consider such collections as symbols of a certain kind which are to facilitate mathematical calculations in much the same way as numbers do. In spite of the controversial nature of infinite sets great progress has been made in mathematics by the introduction of the Theory of Aggregates in arithmetic, geometry and the theory of functions. (German, Mannigfaltigkeit, Menge; French, Ensemble).
3. In logic, an "aggregate meaning" is a form of common or universal opinion or thought held by more than one person.
4. In the philosophy of nature, aggregate has various meanings: it is a mass formed into clusters (anat.); a compound or an organized mass of individuals (zool.); an agglomerate (bot.) an agglomeration of distinct minerals separable by mechanical means (geol.); or, in general, a compound mass in which the elements retain their essential individuality. -- T.G.
(in mathematics): The concept of an aggregate is now usually identified with that of a class (q.v.) -- although as a historical matter this does not, perhaps, exactly represent Cantor's notion. -- A.C.
Agnoiology: (Gr. agnoio + logos, discourse on ignorance) J. F. Ferrier (1854) coined both this term and the term epistemology as connoting distinctive areas of philosophic inquiry in support of ontology. Agnoiology is the doctrine of ignorance which seeks to determine what we are necessarily ignorant of. It is a critique of agnosticism prior to the latter's appearance. Ignorance is defined in relation to knowledge since one cannot be ignorant of anything which cannot possibly be known. -- H.H.
Agnosticism: (Gr. agnostos, unknowing) 1. (epist.) that theory of knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of a certain subject-matter.
2. (theol.) that theory of religious knowledge which asserts that it is impossible for man to attain knowledge of God.
Agnosy: Ignorance, especially universal ignorance. -- C.A.B.
Aham brahma asmi: (Skr.) "I am brahman", the formula of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10, denoting the full coincidence of the human and divine, arrived at not so much by a spontaneous mystic insight as by logical deduction from the nature of world and self. -- K.F.L.
Ahamkara: (Skr.) Literally "I-maker", the principle generating the consciousness of one's ego or personal identity; the ground of apperception. -- K.F.L.
Ahanta: (Skr. "I-ness") Selfhood, state of being an ego; the subject in knowledge. -- K.F.L.
Ahimsa: (Skr.) Non-injury, an ethical principle applicable to all living beings and subscribed to by most Hindus. In practice it would mean, e.g., abstaining from animal food, relinquishing war, rejecting all thought of taking life, regarding all living beings akin. It has led to such varied phenomena as the Buddhist's sweeping the path before him or straining the water, the almost reverential attitude toward the cow, and Gandhi's non-violent resistence campaign. -- K.F.L.
Ahriman: (Middle Persian) Zoroaster, in building upon an ancient Indo-Iranian antecedent, expounded a thoroughgoing dualism in which Ormazd (s.v.) is the good, Ahriman the evil principle, corresponding to the Christian God and Devil, locked in combat on all levels of thought and existence. In that they are reciprocal and of a dialectic necessity, this dualism has, philosophically, the implication of a monism which was, indeed, ethically and eschatologically elaborated in the Zoroastrian optimism that postulates the ultimate victory of Ahura Mazdah (s.v.) or Ormazd. -- K.F.L.
Ai: (C.) Love; love for all people as a practical way to social welfare (chien ai) (Mo Tzu, between 500 and 396 B.C.); love for all, which is identical with true manhood (jen) (Han Yu, 767-824 A.D. -- W.T.C.
Akasa: (Skr.) "Ether"; space) in Indian philosophy the continuum that is to be postulated in connection with the paramanus (q.v.). -- K.F.L.
Aksara: (Skr.) "Imperishable", a descriptive synonym for brahman (q.v.), the Absolute, in the Upanishads (q.v.); has also the meaning of "syllable". -- K.F.L.
Albertists: The appellation is conferred on any disciple of Albertus Magnus. In particular it was applied to a group of Scholastics at the University of Cologne during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was the age of the struggles between the nominalists and the realists, who controlled the University of Cologne, but were themselves split into factions, the Thomists and the Albertists. The latter taught that the universalia in re and post rem were identical, and that logic was a speculative rather than a practical science. The principal Albertists were Heinrich von Kampen, Gerhard von Harderwyk, and Arnold von Lugde. -- J.J.R.
Albertus, Magnus: St., O.P. (1193-1280) Count of Bollstädt, Bishop of Ratisbon, Doctor Universalis, was born at Lauingen, Bavaria, studied at Padua and Bologna, entered the Dominican Order in 1223. He taught theology at the Univ. of Paris from 1245-48, when he was sent to Cologne to organize a new course of studies for his Order; St. Thomas Aquinas was his student and assistant at this time. Later his time was given over to administrative duties and he was made Bishop of Ratisbon in 1260. In 1262 he gave up his bishopric and returned to a life of writing, teaching and controversy.
Of very broad interests in science, philosophy and theology, Albert popularized a great part of the corpus of Aristotelian and Arabic philosophic writings in the 13th century. His thought incorporates elements of Augustinism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, Avicennism, Boethianism into a vast synthesis which is not without internal inconsistencies. Due to the lack of critical editions of his works, a true estimate of the value of his philosophy is impossible at present. However, he must have had some influence on St. Thomas, and there was a lively Albertinian school lasting into the Renaissance. Chief works: Summa de Creaturis, Comment, in IV Lib. Sent., Philos, Commentaries on nearly all works of Aristotle, De Causis, De intellectu et intellig., Summa Theologiae (Opera Omnia, ed. Borgnet, 38 vol., Paris, 1890-99). -- V.J.B.
Alcuin: (c. 730-804) Was born in Northumbria and studied at the School of York under Egbert. In 781 he was called to head the Palatine School of Charlemagne. He died at St. Martin of Tours. It is his general influence on the revival of Christian learning that is significant in the history of philosophy. His psychology is a form of simplified Augustinianism. His treatise, De animae ratione ad Eulaliam Virginem, is extant (PL 101). -- V.J.B.
Alexander, Samuel: (1859-1938) English thinker who developed a non-psychic, neo-realistic metaphysics and synthesis. He makes the process of emergence a metaphysical principle. Although his inquiry is essentially a priori, his method is empirical. Realism at his hands becomes a quasi-materialism, an alternative to absolute idealism and ordinary materialism. It alms to combine the absoluteness of law in physics with the absolute unpredictability of emergent qualities. Whereas to the ancients and in the modern classical conception of physical science, the original stuff was matter and motion, after Minkowski, Einstein, Lorenz and others, it became indivisible space-time, instead of space and time.
Thus nature begins as a four-dimensional matrix in which it is the moving principle. Materiality, secondary qualities, life, mentality are all emergent modifications of proto-space-time. Mind is the nervous system blossoming out into the capacity of awareness. Contemplative knowledge, where the object is set over against the mind, and the actual being, or experiencing, or enjoying of reality, where there is no inner duplicity of subject and object, constitute the two forms of knowledge. Alexander conceives the deity as the next highest level to be emerged out of any given level. Thus for beings on the level of life mind is deity, but for beings possessing minds there is a nisus or urge toward a still higher quality. To such beings that dimly felt quality is deity. The quality next above any given level is deity to the beings on that level. For men deity has not yet emerged, but there is a nisus towards its emergence. S. Alexander, Space, Time and Deity (1920). -- H.H.
Alexandrian School: A convenient designation for the various religious philosophies that flourished at Alexandria from the first to the fourth centuries of the Christian era, such as Neo-Pythagoreanism, the Jewish Platonism of Philo, Christian Platonism, and Neo-Platonism. Common to all these schools is the attempt to state Oriental religious beliefs in terms of Greek philosophy. -- G.R.M.
Alexandrists: A term applied to a group of Aristotelians in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Besides the Scholastic followers of Aristotle there were some Greeks, whose teaching was tinged with Platonism. Another group, the Averroists, followed Aristotle as interpreted by Ibn Rushd, while a third school interpreted Aristotle in the light of the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias, hence were called Alexandrists. Against the Averroists who attributed a vague sort of immortality to the active intellect, common to all men, the Alexandrists, led by Pomponazzi, asserted the mortality of the individual human soul after its separation from universal reason. -- J.J.R.
Al Farabi: Died 950, introduced Aristotelian logic into the world of Islam. He was known to posterity as the "second Aristotle". He continued the encyclopedic tradition inaugurated by Al Kindi. His metaphysical speculation influenced Avicenna who found in the works of his predecessor the fundamental notion of a distinction between existence and essence, the latter not implying necessarily in a contingent being the former which therefore has to be given by God. He also emphasizes the Aristotelian notion of the "first mover". The concretization of the universal nature in particular things points to a creative power which has endowed being with such a nature. Al Farabi's philosophy is dependent in certain parts on Neo-Platonism. Creation is emanation. There is an anima mundi the images of which become corporeal beings. Logic is considered as the preamble to all science. Physics comprises all factual knowledge, including psychology; metaphysics and ethics are the other parts of philosophy. Cl. Baeumker, Alfarabi, Ueber den Vrsprung der Wissensehaften, Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1916. Vol. XIX. M. Horten, Das Buch der Ringsteine Farabis. ibid. 1906. Vol. V.
-- R.A.
Al Gazali: Born 1059 in Tus, in the country of Chorasan, taught at Bagdad, lived for a time in Syria, died in his home town 1111. He started as a sceptic in philosophy and became a mystic and orthodox afterwards. Philosophy is meaningful only as introduction to theology. His attitude resembles Neo-Platonic mysticism and is anti-Aristotelian. He wrote a detailed report on the doctrines of Farabi and Avicenna only to subject them to a scathing criticism in Destructio philosophorum where he points out the self-contradictions of philosophers. His main works are theological. In his writings on logic he wants to ensure to theology a reliable method of procedure. His metaphysics also is mainly based on theology: creation of the world out of nothing, resurrection, and so forth. Cf. H. Bauer, Die Dogmatik Al-Ghazalis, 1912. -- R.A.
Algebraization: (Ger. Algebraisierung) In Husserl: Substitution of algebraic symbols (indeterminate terms) for the words (determinate terms) in which the material content of an objective sense is expressed. See Formalization.
-- D.C.
Algebra of logic is the name given to the Nineteenth Century form of the calculi of classes and propositions. It is distinguished from the contemporary forms of these calculi primarily by the absence of formalization as a logistic system (q.v.) The propositional calculus was also at first either absent or not clearly distinguished from the class calculus; the distinction between the two was made by Peirce and afterwards more sharply by Schröder (1891) but the identity of notation was retained.
Important names in the history of the subject are those of Boole (q.v.), De Morgan (q.v.), W. S. Jevons, Peirce (q.v.), Robert Grassmann, John Venn, Hugh MacColl, Schröder (q.v.), P. S. Poretsky -- A.C.
Algedonic: (Gr. algos, pain + hedone, pleasure) Term applied to feelings of pleasure or pain. -- L.W.
Algorithm (or, less commonly, but etymologlcally more correctly, algorism): In its original usage, this word referred to the Arabic system of notation for numbers and to the elementary operations of arithmetic as performed in this notation. In mathematics, the word is used for a method or process of calculation with symbols (often, but not necessarily, numerical symbols) according to fixed rules which yields effectively the, solution of any given problem of some class of problems. -- A.C.
Al Kindi: Of the tribe of Kindah, lived in Basra and Bagdad where he died 873. He is the first of the great Arabian followers of Aristotle whose influence is noticeable in Al Kindi's scientific and psychological doctrines. He wrote on geometry, astronomy, astrology, arithmetic, music (which he developed on arithmetical principles), physics, medicine, psychology, meteorology, politics. He distinguishes the active intellect from the passive which is actualized by the former. Discursive reasoning and demonstration he considers as achievements of a third and a fourth intellect. In ontology he seems to hypostasize the categories, of which he knows five: matter, form, motion, place, time, and which he calls primary substances. Al Kindi inaugurated the encyclopedic form of philosophical treatises, worked out more than a century later by Avicenna (q.v.). He also was the first to meet the violent hostility of the orthodox theologians but escaped persecution. A. Nagy, Die philos. Abhandlungen des Jacqub ben Ishaq al-Kindi, Beitr, z. Gesch. d. Phil. d. MA. 1897, Vol. II. -- R.A.
All: All and every are usual verbal equivalents of
the universal quantifier. See Quantifier. -- A.C.
Allen, Ethan: (1737-1789) Leader of the Green Mountain Boys and of their famous exploits during the American Revolution. He is less known but nonetheless significant as the earliest American deist. His Reason, the Only Oracle of Man (1784), expressed his opposition to the traditional Calvinism and its doctrine of original sin. He rejected prophecy and revelation but believed in immortality on moral grounds. He likewise believed in free will. -- L.E.D.
Allgemeingültig: (Ger. allgemein + gelten, universally valid) A proposition or judgment which is universally valid, or necessary. Such propositions may be either empirical, i.e., dependent upon experience, or a priori, i.e., independent of all experience. In Kant's theoretical philosophy the necessary forms of the sensibility and understanding are declared to have universal validity a priori, because they are the sine qua non, of any and all experience. -- O.F.K.
Al-Mukamis, David Ibn Merwan: Early Jewish philosopher (died c. 937). His philosophic work, Book of Twenty Tractates shows influence of the teachings of the Kalam (q.v.) reasoning follows along lines similar to that of Saadia. -- M.W.
Als Ob: (Ger. as if) Fictional; hypothetical; postulated; pragmatic. The term was given currency by Hans Vaihinger's Die Philosophic des Als Ob (1911), which developed the thesis that our knowledge rests on a network of artfully contrived fictions which are not verifiable but pragmatically justifiable. While such fictions, employed in all fields of human knowledge and endeavor, deliberately falsify or circumvent the stream of immediate impressions, they greatly enhance reality. -- O.F.K.
Alteration: (Lat. alter, other) In Aristotle's philosophy change of quality, as distinguished from change of quantity (growth and diminution) and from change of place (locomotion). -- G.R.M.
Altruism: (Alter: other) In general, the cult of benevolence; the opposite of Egoism (q.v.). Term coined by Comte and adopted in Britain by H. Spencer.
1. For Comte Altruism meant the discipline and eradication of self-centered desire, and a life devoted to the good of others; more particularly, selfless love and devotion to Society. In brief, it involved the self-abnegating love of Catholic Christianity redirected towards Humanity conceived as an ideal unity. As thus understood, altruism involves a conscious opposition not only to egoism (whether understood as excessive or moderate self-love), but also to the formal or theological pursuit of charity and to the atomic or individualistic social philosophy of 17th-18th century liberalism, of utilitarianism, and of French Ideology.
2. By extension the term has come to mean the pursuit of the good of others, whether motivated by either self-centered or other-centered interest, or whether by disinterested duty. By some it is identified with the protective and other-regarding feelings, attitudes, and behavior of animal life in general; while by others its use is restricted to mean such on the level of reflective intelligence. -- W.L.
Ambiguous middle, fallacy of: See quatemio terminorum.
Amechanical: Term applied to psychologically conditioned movements. (Avenarius.) -- H.H.
Ammonius, Saccus: Teacher of Plotinus and Origen and reputed founder of Neo-Platonism. -- M.F.
Amnestic: Characterised by amnesia, loss of memory. -- C.A.B.
Amoral: Action, attitudes, state or character which is neither moral nor immoral, i.e., which is outside the moral realm. Neither right nor wrong. Ethically indifferent. Non-moral. Non-ethical. See Moral, Immoral, Ethics. -- A.J.B.
Amphiboly: Any fallacy arising from ambiguity of grammatical construction (as distinguished from ambiguity of single words), a premiss being accepted, or proved, on the basis of one interpretation of the grammatical construction, and then used in a way which is correct only on the basis of another interpretation of the grammatical construction. -- A.C.
Ampliative: (Lat. ampliare, to make wider; Ger. Erweiterungsurteil) Synthetic; serving to expand. In an ampliative judgment the predicate adds something not already contained in the meaning of the subject-term. Contrasted with analytic or explicative. -- O.F.K.
Anadi: (Skr.) Beginningless, said of the Absolute and the world. -- K.F.L.
Analogic: (Gr. mystical) Usually employed as a noun in the plural, signifying an interpretation of Scripture pointing to a destiny to be hoped for and a goal to be attained; as an adjective it means, pertaining to the kind of interpretation described above. -- J.J.R.
Analogies of Experience: (Ger. Analogien der Erfahrung) Kant's three dynamic principles (substantiality, reciprocity, and causality) of the understanding comprising the general category of relation, through which sense data are brought into the unity of experience. (See Kantianism.) -- O.F.K.
Analogy: (in Scholasticism) Predication common to several inferiors of a name, which is accepted in different senses, in such a manner, nevertheless, that some principle warrants its common applicability. Accordingly as this principle is sought in the relations of cause and effect, proportion or proportionality there are distinguished various types of analogy.
Analogy of attribution: Is had when the principle of unity is found in a common concept to which the inferiors are related either by cause or effect. Moreover this common concept must refer principally and per se to a prime reality to which the inferiors are analogous. Thus food, medicine and pulse are said to be healthy. In this case the common concept is health which applies principally and per se to the animal; however, food, medicine and pulse are related to it through the various forms of cause and effect.
Analogy of proportion: Is had when the principle of unity is found, not in the relations of two or more to a common concept but in the interrelation of two concepts to themselves. This relation may be one of similitude or order. Thus being is predicated of substance and quantity, not because of their relations to a third reality which primordially contains this notion, but because of a relation both of similitude and order which they have to each other.
Analogy of proportionality: Is had when the principle of unity is found in an equality of proportions. This analogy is primarily used between material and spiritual realities. Thus sight is predicated of ocular vision and intellectual understanding "eo quod sicut visus est in oculo, ita intellectus est in mente". -- H.G.
Analogy: Originally a mathematical term, Analogia, meaning equality of ratios (Euclid VII Df. 20, V. Dfs. 5, 6), which entered Plato's philosophy (Republic 534a6), where it also expressed the epistemological doctrine that sensed things are related as their mathematical and ideal correlates. In modern usage analogy was identified with a weak form of reasoning in which "from the similarity of two things in certain particulars, their similarity in other particulars is inferred." (Century Dic.) Recently, the analysis of scientific method has given the term new significance. The observable data of science are denoted by concepts by inspection, whose complete meaning is given by something immediately apprehendable; its verified theory designating unobservable scientific objects is expressed by concepts by postulation, whose complete meaning is prescribed for them by the postulates of the deductive theory in which they occur. To verify such theory relations, termed epistemic correlations (J. Un. Sc. IX: 125-128), are required. When these are one-one, analogy exists in a very precise sense, since the concepts by inspection denoting observable data are then related as are the correlated concepts by postulation designating unobservable scientific objects. -- F.S.C.N.
Analogy of Pythagoras: (Gr. analogia) The equality of ratios, or proportion, between the lengths of the strings producing the consonant notes of the musical scale. The discovery of these ratios is credited to Pythagoras, who is also said to have applied the principle of mathematical proportion to the other arts, and hence to have discovered, in his analogy, the secret of beauty in all its forms. -- G.R.M.
Analysis: (Chemical) The identification and estimation of chemical individuals in a mixture; the identification and estimation of elements in a compound; the identification and estimation of types of substances in complex mixtures; the identification and estimation of isotopes In an "element". -- W.M.M.
Analysis, intentional: (Ger. intentionale Analyse) In Husserl: Explication and clarification of the essential structure of actual and potential (horizonal) synthesis by virtue of which objects are Intentionally constituted. As noematic, intentional analysis discovers, explicates, and clarifies, the focally and horizontally intended objective sense (and the latter's quasi-objective substrates) in its manners of givenness, posltedness, etc., and yields clues to the corresponding noetic synthesis. As noetic or constitutional, intentional analysis discovers, isolates, and clarifies these synthetically constituted structures of consciousness. See Phenomenology. -- D.C.
Analysis (mathematical): The theory of real numbers, of complex numbers, and of functions of real and complex numbers. See number; continuity; limit. -- A. C.
Analytic: (Gr. analytike) Aristotle's name for the technique of logical analysis. The Prior Analytics contains his analysis of the syllogism, the Posterior Analytics his analysis of the conditions of scientific or demonstrable knowledge.
-- G.R.M.
In Kant. One of two divisions of general logic (the other being Dialectic) which discovers by analysis all the functions of reason as exercised in thought, thus disclosing the formal criteria of experience and truth. (See Kantianism.)
-- O.F.K.
See also Meaning, Kinds of.
Analyticity: See Meaning, Kinds of; Truth, semantical; Valid.
Analytic Judgment: (Ger. analytisches Urteil) In Kant: A judgment in which the predicate concept is included within the subject concept, as analysis should or does disclose. Such a judgment does not require verification by experience; its sole criterion is the law of contradiction. (See Kantianism.) -- O.F.K.
Analytic, Transcendental: In Kant: The section of the Critique of Pure Reason which deals with the concepts and principles of the understanding. Its main purpose is the proof of the categories within the realm of phenomena. -- A.C.E.
Analytical Jurisprudence: Theory of Austin, Markby, Holland, Salmond, etc., considering jurisprudence the formal science of positive law. Its main task is to analyze the necessary notions of law. Term coined by Henry Summer Maine. -- W.E.
Anamnesis: (Gr. anamnesis) Calling to mind; recollection; in Plato, the process whereby the mind gains true knowledge, by recalling the vision of the Ideas which the soul experienced in a previous existence apart from the body. -- G.R.M.
Ananda: (Skr.) Joy, happiness, bliss, beatitude, associated in the thinking of many Indian philosophers with moksa (q.v.); a concomitant of perfection and divine consciousness (cf. sat-citananda). -- K.F.L.
Ananya: (Skr. "not other") Designating the non-otherness of the cosmic principle from the individual. -- K.F.L.
Anarchism: This doctrine advocates the abolition of political control within society: the State, it contends, is man's greatest enemy -- eliminate it and the evils of human life will disappear. Positively, anarchism envisages a homely life devoted to unsophisticated activity and filled with simple pleasures. Thus it belongs in the "primitive tradition" of Western culture and springs from the philosophical concept of the inherent and radical goodness of human nature. Modern anarchism probably owes not a little, in an indirect way, to the influence of the primitivistic strain in the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
In a popular sense the word "anarchy" is often used to denote a state of social chaos, but it is obvious that the word can be used in this sense only by one who denies the validity of anarchism. -- M.B.M.
Anatta-vada: (Pali) Theory (vada) of the non-existence of soul (anatta) one of the fundamental teachings of Gautama Buddha (q.v.) who regarded all ideas about the soul or self wrong, inadequate or illusory. -- K.F.L.
Anaxagoras, of Klazomene: (about 430 B.C.) As a middle-aged man he settled in Athens; later he was accused of impiety and forced to leave the city. Anaxagoras taught that there is an infinity of simple substances, that is, such as are only divisible into parts of the same nature as the whole. These "seeds" are distributed throughout the universe. Their coming together gives rise to individual things, their separation entails the passing away of individual things. To account for the cause of motion of these "seeds" or elemental substances Anaxagoras conceived of a special kind of matter or "soul-substance" which alone is in motion itself and can communicate this motion to the rest. Now, since the universe displays harmony, order and purposiveness in its movements, Anaxagoras conceived this special substance as a mind-stuff or an eternal, imperishable Reason diffused throughout the universe. Anaxagoras was thus the first to introduce the teleological principle into the explanation of the natural world. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy; Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokr. -- M.F.
Anaximander: (6th Cent. B.C.) With Thales and Anaximenes he formed the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy; with these and the other thinkers of the cosmological period he sought the ground of the manifold processes of nature in a single world-principle or cosmic stuff which he identified with "the Infinite". He was the first to step out of the realm of experience and ascribed to his "Infinite" the attributes of eternity, imperishability and inexhaustability. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy; Diels, Frag. d. i Vorsokr. -- M.F.
Anaximenes: (6th Cent. B.C.) With Thales and Anaximander he belongs to the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy; as an Ionian he sought a cosmic material element which would explain the manifold processes of the natural world and declared this to be air. Air, he felt, had the attribute of Infinity which would account for the varieties of nature more readily than water, which his predecessor Thales had postulated. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Diels, Frag. d. Vorsokr. -- M.F.
Anergy: The hypothesis interpreting sensations in terms of the infinite phases of negative energy, which is motion less than zero. (Montague.) -- H.H.
Anglo-Catholic Philosophy: Anglo-Catholicism is the name frequently used to describe the Church of England and her sister communions, including the Episcopal Church in America. As a religious system, it may be described as the maintenance of the traditional credal, ethical and sacramental position of Catholic Christianity, with insistence on the incorporation into that general position of the new truth of philosophy, science and other fields of study and experience. Historically, the Anglo-Catholic divines (as in Hooker and the Caroline writers) took over the general Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy of the schools; their stress, however, was more on the Platonic than the Aristotelian side: "Platonism", Dr. Inge has said, "is the loving mother-nurse of Anglicanism." Statements of this position, modified by a significant agnosticism concerning areas into which reason (it is said) cannot penetrate, may be found collected in Anglicanism (edited by More and Cross). A certain empiricism has always marked Anglo-Catholic theological and philosophical speculation; this is brought out in recent writing by Taylor (Faith of a Moralist), the writers in Lux Mundi (edited by Gore) and its modern successor Essays Catholic and Critical.
In genera, Anglo-Catholic philosophy has been an incarnational or sacramental one, finding God in the Biblical revelation culminating in Christ, but unwilling to limit his self-disclosure to that series of events. Incarnationalism provides, it is said, the setting for the historic Incarnation; general revelation is on sacramental lines, giving meaning to the particular sacraments. For Anglo-Catholic philosophical theology, in its central stream, the key to dogma is the cumulative experience of Christian people, tested by the Biblical revelation as source and standard of that experience and hence "classical" in its value. Revelation is the ultimate authority; the Church possesses a trustworthiness about her central beliefs, but statement of these may change from age to age. Sometimes this main tendency of Anglo-Catholic thought has been sharply criticized by thinkers, themselves Anglicans (cf. Tennant's Philosophical Theology); but these have, in general, served as useful warnings rather than as normal expressions of the Anglican mind.
In very recent years, a new stress has been laid upon the dogmatic side of Christianity as expressed in liturgy. This has been coupled with a revived interest in Thomism, found both in older philosophers such as A. E. Taylor and in younger men like A. G. Hebert (cf. his Grace and Nature, etc.). -- W.N.P.
Angst: (Ger. dread) Concern or care, which are the essence of dread. (Heidegger.) -- H.H.
Anima Mundi: See: The World Soul, Bruno.
Animalitarianism: A term used by Lovejoy in Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity for the belief that animals are happier, more admirable, more "normal", or "natural", than human beings, -- G.B.
Animism: (Lat. anima, soul) The doctrine of the reality of souls.
- Anthropology: (a) the view that souls are attached to all things either as their inner principle of spontaneity or activity, or as their dwellers, (b) the doctrine that Nature is inhabited by various grades of spirits, (s. Spiritism).
- Biology Psychology: the view that the ground whatever has disowned its relations is an sich. of life is immaterial soul rather than the material body.
- Metaphysics: the theory that Being is animate,
living, ensouled (s. Hylozoism, Personalism, Monadism).
- Cosmology: the view that the World and the
astronomical bodies possess souls (s. World Soul). -- W.L.
Annihilationism: The doctrine of the complete extinction of the wicked or impenitent at death. Edward White in England in the last century taught the doctrine in opposition to the belief in the eternal punishment of those not to be saved. -- V.F.
Anoetic: (Gr. a + noetikos, from nous, the mind) Applied to pure sensations, affective states and other pre-cognitive or non-cognitive states of mind. -- L.W.
Anschauung: A German term used in epistemology to mean intuition or perception with a quality of directness or immediacy. It is a basic term in Kant's philosophy, denoting that which presents materials to the intellect through the forms of space and time. These forms predetermine what types of objects (schemata) can be set up when the understanding applies its own forms to the facts of sense. Kant distinguished "empirical" intuitions (a posteriori) of objects through sensation, and "pure" intuitions (a priori) with space and time as the forms of sensibility. The characteristics and functions of Anschauung are discussed in the first division (Aesthetic) of the Critique of Pure Reason. Caird disputes the equivalence of the Kantian Anschauung with intuition; but it is difficult to find an English word more closely related to the German term. -- T.G.
Anselmian argument: Anselm (1033-1109) reasoned thus: I have an idea of a Being than which nothing greater can be conceived; this idea is that of the most perfect, complete, infinite Being, the greatest conceivable; now an idea which exists in reality (in re) is greater than one which exists only in conception (in intellectu); hence, if my idea is the greatest it must exist in reality. Accordingly, God, the Perfect Idea, Being, exists. (Anselm's argument rests upon the basis of the realistic metaphysics of Plato.) -- V.F.
Anselrn of Canterbury, St.: (1033-1109) Was born at Aosta in Italy, educated by the Benedictines, entered the Order c. 1060. Most of his writings were done at the Abbey of Le Bec in Normandy, where he served as Abbot. In 1093 he became Archbishop of Canterbury, which post he occupied with distinction till his death. Anselm is most noted for his much discussed "ontological" argument to prove the existence of God. His theory of truth and his general philosophy are thoroughly Augustinian. Chief works: Monologium, Proslogium, De Veritate, Cur Deus Homo (in PL 158-9). -- V.J.B.
An Sich: (Ger. literally in or by self. Lat. in se) Anything taken in itself without relation to anything else, especially without relation to a knowing consciousness. In Hegel's philosophy whatever has disowned its relations is an sich. In this status it reveals its inner potentialities. Thus in Hegel's system an sich frequently refers to that which is latent, undeveloped, or in certain connections, that which is unconscious. Kant used an sich more loosely to describe any thing independent of consciousness or experience. Thus he contrasted the "Ding-an-sich" (thing-in-itself) with appearance (phenomenon), the latter being a function of consciousness, the former outside all consciousness. -- O.F.K.
Ansichtslosigkeit: (Ger. point-of-viewlessness) Objectivity, or the unmediated approach to bare fact. (Heidegger.) -- H.H.
Antar-atman: (Skr.) "Inner self", a term for the self found in the Upanishads (q.v.). A similar concept is antar-yamin, meaning "inner controller." -- K.F.L.
Antecedent: In a sentence of the form A ⊃ B ("if A then B"), the constituent sentences A and B are called antecedent and consequent respectively. Or the same terminology may be applied to propositions expressed by these sentences. -- A. C.
Anthropocentric: Literally, centering in man. A term which may be used in connection with extreme humanism, viewing the world in terms only of human experience. -- V.F.
Anthropolatry: (Gr.) The worshipping or cult of a human being conceived as a god, and conversely of a god conceived as a human being. The deification of individual human beings was practiced by most early civilizations, and added much colour to the folklore and religion of such countries as Egypt, Greece, India and Japan. The human origin of anthropolatry is illustrated by the failure of Alexander the Great to obtain
divine honours from his soldiers. In contrast, the Shinto religion in Japan still considers the emperor as a "visible deity", and maintains shrines devoted to brave warriors or heroes. Monotheistic religions consider anthropolatry as
a superstition. -- T.G.
Anthropology, Philosophical: (in Max Scheler) The philosophical science concerned with the questions about the essence of man. -- P.A.S.
Anthropopathism: (Gr. anthropos, man; pathein, suffer) Sometimes referred to as the pathetic fallacy, i.e., attributing human feelings illegitimately to situations or things lacking such capacities. -- V.F.
Anticipation: (Lat. ante, before + capere, to take) The foreknowledge of future events and experiences. Anticipation, in contrast to expectation, is allegedly immediate and non-inferential cognition of the future. See Expectation; Foreknowledge. -- L.W.
In Lucretius, the Scholastics, Fr. Bacon, and Leibniz, it means a hypothesis without confirmation.
Anticipations of experience: In Kant's Crit. of pure Reason Antizipationen der Wahrnehmung) the second of two synthetic principles
of the understanding (the other being "Axioms of Intuition") by which the mind is able to determine something a priori in regard to what is in itself empirical. While the mind cannot anticipate the specific qualities which are to be experienced, we can, nevertheless, Kant holds, predetermine or anticipate any sense experience that "in all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude or degree." -- O.F.K.
Antilogism: If in the syllogism in Barbara the conclusion is replaced by its contradictory there is obtained the following set of three (formulas representing) propositions,
M(x) ⊃x P(x),
S(x) ⊃x M(x),
S(x) ∧x ∼P(x),
from any two of which the negation of the third may be inferred. Such an inconsistent triad of propositions is called an antilogism.
From the principle of the antilogism, together with obversion, simple conversion of E and I, and the fact that in the pairs, A and O, E and I, each proposition of the pair is equivalent to the negation of the other, all of the traditional valid moods of the syllogism may be derived except those which require a third (existential) premiss (see logic, formal, §§4, 5). With the further aid of subalternation the remaining valid moods may be derived.
This extension of the traditional reductions of the syllogistic moods is due to Christine Ladd Franklin. She, however, stated the matter within the algebra of classes (see logic, formal, § 7), taking the three terms of the syllogism as classes. From this point of view the three propositions of an antilogism appear as follows:
m ∩ −p = Λ, s ∩ −p ≠ Λ.
-- A.C.
A contradiction in terms, concepts, or propositions forming an inconsistent triad (Mrs. Ladd-Franklin), a set of three propositions such that if any two are true the third must be false; thus any two will strictly imply the contradictory of the third. An antilogism may be obtained from any strictly valid Aristotelian syllogism by contradicting the conclusion, q.v. Antilogism. -- C.A.B.
Anti-metaphysics: 1. Agnosticism (q.v.). 2. Logical Positivism (see Scientific Empiricism (1)) holds that those metaphysical statements which are not confirmable by experiences (see Verification 4, 5) have no cognitive meaning and hence are pseudo-statements (see Meaning, Kinds of, 1, 5), -- R.C.
Antinomies, logical: See paradoxes, logical.
Antinomianism: (Gr. anti, against; nomos, law) A term introduced by Martin Luther. Johann Agricola, contemporary of Luther, held that the gospel rather than the law is determinative in man's repentance. The term is used, more generally, to designate freedom from law or compulsion or external regulation to human living.
-- V.F.
Antinomy: (Ger. Antinomie) The mutual contradiction of two principles or inferences resting on premises of equal validity. Kant shows, in the Antinomies of pure Reason, that contradictory conclusions about the cosmos can be established with equal credit; from this he concluded that the Idea of the world, like other transcendent ideas of metaphysics, is a purely speculative, indeterminate notion. (See Kantianism.) -- O.F.K.
Antisthenes: Of Athens (c. 444-368 B.C.) founder of the Cynic School of Greek Philosophy. See Cynics. -- M.F.
Antistrophon argument: (Gr. antistrophos, turned in an opposite way) In rhetoric, any argument by an opponent which can be turned against him. -- J.K.F.
Antithesis: (Gr. anti-against, tithenai- to set) In a general sense, the opposition or contrast of ideas or statements.
In philosophy, a proposition opposed to a given thesis expressing a fact or a positive statement. With Kant, it is the negative member of the antinomies of reason. With Hegel, it is the second phase of the dialectical process, which denies the first moment or thesis, and which contributes to the emergence of the synthesis blending the partial truths of the thesis and the antithesis, and transcending them both.
In rhetoric, the contrast involved by an antithesis is technically expressed by the position of opposite words in one or more sentences or clauses. -- T.G.
Antitypy: The property of concepts or objects of thought to resist attribution of qualities or postulates incompatible with their semantic value and ontological nature. -- T.G.
Anu: (Skr.) Atom; point. -- K.F.L.
Anumana: (Skr.) Inference. -- K.F.L.
Aorist: (Gr.) Referring to unspecified past time without implication of continuance or repetition; indefinite j undefined. -- C.A.B.
Apagoge: (Gr. apagoge) In Aristotle's logic (1) a syllogism whose major premiss is certain but whose minor premiss is only probable; abduction; (2) a method of indirect demonstration whereby the validity of a conclusion is established by assuming its contradictory and showing that impossible or unacceptable consequences follow; the reductio ad impossibile. -- G.R.M.
A parte ante: A phrase the literal meaning of which is, from the part before, referring to duration previous to a given event. -- J.J.R.
A parte post: A phrase the literal meaning of which is, from the part after, referring to duration subsequent to a given event. -- J.J.R.
Apathia: (Gr. apathla, no feeling) In Epicurean (q.v.) and Stoic (q.v.) ethics: the inner equilibrium and peace of mind, freedom from emotion, that result from contemplation, for its own sake, on the ends of life.
Apeiron: (Gr. apeiron) The boundless; the indeterminate; the infinite. In the philosophy of Anaximander the apeiron is the primal indeterminate matter out of which all things come to be. The apeiron appears frequently elsewhere in early Greek philosophy, notably in the dualism of the Pythagoreans, where it is opposed to the principle of the Limit (peras), or number. -- G.R.M.
Apercu: An immediate insight, not in itself analytical. -- C.A.B.
Apocatastasis: (Gr. apokatastasis, complete restitution) In theology this term refers to a final restitution or universal salvation. -- V.F.
Apodeictic: See Modality.
Apodictic Knowledge: (Gr. apodeiktikos) Knowledge of what must occur, as opposed to knowledge of what might occur or is capable of occurring, or of what is actual or occurring; opposed to assertoric knowledge and problematic i knowledge. -- A.C.B.
Apollinarianism: The view held by Apollinaris (310-390), a Christian bishop. He defended the deity of Jesus Christ in a manner regarded by the orthodox church as too extreme. Jesus, according to him, lacked a human soul, a human will, the Logos of God taking full possession. -- V.F.
Apollonian: The art impulse in which one sees things as in a dream, detached from real experience. The theoretical, intellectual impulses striving after measure, order, and harmony. (Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy.) In Spengler, Decline of the West, the classical spirit as contrasted with the Modern Faustian age. -- H.H,
Apologetics: (Gr. apologetikos, fit for a defence) The discipline which deals with a defence of a position or body of doctrines. Traditional Christian theology gave over to Christian Apologetics (or, simply Apologetics) the task of defending the faith. As such the discipline was also called "Evidences of the Christian Religion." Each particular faith, however, developed its own particular type of apologetics. -- V.F.
Apology: (Gr. apologia) A speech or writing in defense. Plato's Apology of Socrates purports to be the speech delivered by Socrates in his own defense at the trial in which he was condemned to death. -- G.R.M.
Apophansis: A Greek word for proposition involving etymologically a reference to its realist onto-logical background (Greek root of phaos, light). In this sense, a proposition expresses the illumination of its subject by its predicate or predicates; or again, It makes explicit the internal luminosity of its subject by positing against it as predicates its essential or accidental constituents. The Aristotelian apophansis or logosapopkantikos denotes the fundamental subject-predicate form, either as an independent propositlonal form or as a syllogistic conclusion, to which all other types of propositions may be reduced by analysis and deduction. It cannot be said that the controversies initiated by modern symbolic logic have destroyed the ontological or operational value of the Aristotelian apophantic form. -- T.G.
Apophantic: (Ger. apophantlsch) In Husserl: Of, or pertaining to, predicative judgments or the theory of predicative judgments. -- D.C.
Aporetics: (Gr. aporetlkos, one who Is Inclined to doubt, who is at a loss about a matter) Obsolete term for sceptics. -- H.H.
Aporia: (Gr. aporla) A theoretical difficulty or puzzle. -- G.R.M.
A posteriori: (Lat. following after) (a) In psychology and epistemology: refers to the data of the mind which owe their origin to the outside world of human experience. Such data are acquired by the mind and do not belong to the mind's native equipment (a priori). (b) In logic: a posteriori reasoning (as opposed to a priori reasoning) is inductive, i.e., the type which begins with observed facts and from these infers general conclusions. -- V.F.
Apparent: (Lat, ad + parere, to come forth) 1. Property of seeming to be real or factual. 2. Obvious or clearly given to the mind or senses.
Appearance:
- Neutrally, a presentation to an observer.
- Epistemology:
- A sensuously observable state of affairs.
- The mental or subjective correlate of a thing-in-itself.
- A sensuous object existent or possible, in space and time, related by the categories (Kant). It differs from illusion by its objectivity or logical validity.
- Metaphysics: A degree of truth or reality; a fragmentary and self-contradictory judgment about reality.
-- W.L.
Appearances: (Ger. Erscheinungen) In Kant, applied to things as they are for human experience as opposed to things as they are for themselves. -- A.C.E.
Apperception: (Lat. ad + percipere, to perceive)
(a) In epistemology: The introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states. Leibniz, who introduced the term, distinguished between perception, (the inner state as representing outer things) and apperception (the inner state as reflectively aware of itself). Principles of Nature and of Grace, § 4. In Kant, apperception denotes the unity of self-consciousness pertaining to either the empirical ego ("empirical apperception") or to the pure ego ("transcendental apperception"), Critique of Pure Reason, A 106-8.
(b) In psychology: The process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experiences of an individual to form a new whole. The residuum of past experience is called the apperceptive mass. Cf. Herbart, Psyckologie als Wissenschaft, Part III, Sect. I, ch. 5. -- L.W.
In Kant: (1) Empirical apperception (Ger. empirische Apperzeption). The consciousness of the concrete actual self with its changing states; sometimes, simply, the "inner sense". (2) Transcendental apperception (Ger. transzendentale Apperzeption). The pure, original, unchangeable consciousness which is the necessary condition of experience as such and the ultimate foundation of the synthetic unity of experience. (See Kantianism). -- O.F.K.
Appetite: Name given in Scholastic psychology to all strivings. Sensitive appetites tend toward Individual goods. They are concupiscible insofar as they are directed toward a sensible good or strive to avoid a sensible evil; irascible if the striving encounters obstacles. Their movements are the cause of emotions. Rational or intellectual appetite=will, tending towards the good as such and necessarily therefore towards God as the summum bonum. -- R.A.
Appetition: (Lat. ad + petere, to seek) The internal drive which in the Leibnizian psychology effects the passage from one perception to another. Leibniz, The Monodology, § 15. -- L.W.
To Spinoza, appetition is conscious desire. It is the essence of man insofar as he is conceived as determined to act by any of his affections. -- J.M.
Appetitive: (Lat. ad + petere, to seek) Adjective of appetite. Applied to desire based on animal wants e.g. hunger, sex, etc. The appetitive, along with the ideational and the affective, are the three principal phases of the conscious life.
-- L.W.
Appreciation: (Royce) The faculty by which an individual feels, likes or hates, or, in general, evaluates certain experiences, as opposed to the faculty by which he describes them, communicates them, and renders them permanent through the use of forms or categories. (Royce: Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 390-4.) -- A.C.B.
Apprehension: (ad + prehendere: to seize) 1. Act involving the bare awareness of the presence of an object to consciousness; the general relation of subject to object as inclusive of the more special forms, such as perceiving or remembering, which the relation may take.
2. Act involving the awareness of the bare presence of an object to consciousness, as opposed to any act which involves judgment about such an object. -- A.C.B.
Apprehension span: The extent or complexity of material which an individual is able to apprehend through a single, very brief act of attention. Also called attention span. -- A.C.B.
Appresentation: (Ger. Appräsentation) In Husserl: The function of a presentation proper as motivating the experiential positing of something else as present along with the strictly presented object. -- D.C.
A priori: (Kant) A term applied to all judgments and principles whose validity is independent of all impressions of sense. Whatever is pure a priori is unmixed with anything empirical. In Kant's doctrine, all the necessary conditions of experience (i.e., forms and categories) are a priori. Whatever is a priori must possess universal and necessary validity. Sometimes used loosely to designate anything non-empirical, or something which can be known by reason alone. (See Kantianism). -- O.F.K.
Aquinas, Thomas: (Born at Roccasecca, near Naples, in 1225; oblate at the Benedictine monastery, Monte Cassino, 1230-1239; student at the University of Naples, 1239-1244; having decided to become a Dominican, he studied at the University of Paris under St. Albert the Great, 1245-1248; until 1252 he was in Cologne with St. Albert at the newly opened studium generale of the Dominican Order; in 1252 he returned to study at the faculty of theology in the University of Paris where in 1256 he was given the licentia docendi in theology and where he taught until 1259; from 1259 until 1268 he taught at the papal curia in Rome; returned to the University of Paris to stem the tide against Averroism, 1269-1272; from 1272 he began teaching at the University of Naples. He died March 7, 1274 on the way to the Council of Lyons.)
St. Thomas was a teacher and a writer for some
twenty years (1254-1273). Among his works are:
- Scriptum in IV Libros Sententiarum (1254-1256), Summa Contra Gentiles (c. 1260), Summa Theologica (1265-1272);
- commentaries on Boethius. (De Trinitate, c. 1257-1258), on Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite (De Divinis Nominibus, c. 1261), on the anonymous and important Liber de Causis (1268), and especially on Aristotle's works (1261-1272), Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, On the Soul, Posterior Analytics, On Interpretation, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption;
- Quaestiones Disputatae, which includes questions on such large subjects as De Veritate (1256-1259); De Potentia (1259-1263); De Malo (1263-1268); De Spiritualibus Creaturis, De Anima (1269-1270);
- small treatises or Opuscula, among which especially noteworthy are the De Ente et Essentia (1256); De Aeternitate Mundi (1270), De Unitate Intellecus (1270), De Substantiis Separatis (1272).
While it is extremely difficult to grasp in its entirety the personality behind this complex theological and philosophical activity, some points are quite clear and beyond dispute. During the first five years of his activity as a thinker and a teacher, St. Thomas seems to have formulated his most fundamental ideas in their definite form, to have clarified his historical conceptions of Greek and Arabian philosophers, and to have made more precise and even corrected his doctrinal positions, (cf., e.g., the change on the question of creation between In II Sent., d.l, q.l, a.3, and the later De Potentia, q. III, a.4). This is natural enough, though we cannot pretend to explain why he should have come to think as he did. The more he grew, and that very rapidly, towards maturity, the more his thought became inextricably involved in the defense of Aristotle (beginning with c. 1260), his texts and his ideas, against the Averroists, who were then beginning to become prominent in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris; against the traditional Augustinianism of a man like St. Bonaventure; as well as against that more subtle Augustinianism which could breathe some of the spirit of Augustine, speak the language of Aristotle, but expound, with increasing faithfulness and therefore more imminent disaster, Christian ideas through the Neoplatonic techniques of Avicenna. This last group includes such different thinkers as St. Albert the Great, Henry of Ghent, the many disciples of St. Bonaventure, including, some think, Duns Scotus himself, and Meister Eckhart of Hochheim.
To be an Aristotelian under such extremely complicated circumstances was the problem that St. Thomas set himself. What he did reduced itself fundamentally to three points:
(a) He showed the Platonic orientation of St. Augustine's thought, the limitations that St. Augustine himself placed on his Platonism, and he inferred from this that St. Augustine could not be made the patron of the highly elaborated and sophisticated Platonism that an Ibn Gebirol expounded in his Fons Vitae or an Avicenna in his commentaries on the metaphysics and psychology of Aristotle.
(b) Having singled out Plato as the thinker to search out behind St. Augustine, and having really eliminated St. Augustine from the Platonic controversies of the thirteenth century, St. Thomas is then concerned to diagnose the Platonic inspiration of the various commentators of Aristotle, and to separate what is to him the authentic Aristotle from those Platonic aberrations. In this sense, the philosophical activity of St. Thomas in the thirteenth century can be understood as a systematic critique and elimination of Platonism in metaphysics, psychology and epistemology. The Platonic World of Ideas is translated into a theory of substantial principles in a world of stable and intelligible individuals; the Platonic man, who was scarcely more than an incarcerated spirit, became a rational animal, containing within his being an interior economy which presented in a rational system his mysterious nature as a reality existing on the confines of two worlds, spirit and matter; the Platonic theory of knowledge (at least in the version of the Meno rather than that of the later dialogues where the doctrine of division is more prominent), which was regularly beset with the difficulty of accounting for the origin and the truth of knowledge, was translated into a theory of abstraction in which sensible experience enters as a necessary moment into the explanation of the origin, the growth and the use of knowledge, and in which the intelligible structure of sensible being becomes the measure of the truth of knowledge and of knowing.
(c) The result of this elaborate critique of Platonism is sometimes called the Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis. It is better, however, to call it simply a Thornistic synthesis, not only because St. Thomas criticized Aristotle on several occasions, but also because the real and historical meaning of Aristotle as a philosopher in the fourth century B.C. is still very much in dispute. In any case it ought to be pretty much beyond dispute that St. Thomas was quite aware that Aristotle was not the author of all the doctrines which he attributed to him.
What St. Thomas appears to have insisted on most in thus using Aristotle as a pillar of his own thought was the rehabilitation of man and the universe as stable realities and genuine causes. This insistence has been by some called his naturalism. Against the tendency of thirteenth century Augustinians to disparage the native ability of the human reason to know truth, St. Thomas insisted on the capacity of the reason to act as a genuine and sufficient cause of true knowledge within the natural order. Against the occasionalistic tendencies of Avicennian thought, which reduced both man and the world of change around him to the role of passive spectators of the sole activity of God (i.e., the intellectus agens), St. Thomas asserted the subordinate but autonomous causality of man in the production of knowledge and the genuine causality of sensible realities in the production of change. Ultimately, St. Thomas rests his defense of man and other beings as efficacious causes in their own order on the doctrine of creation; just as he shows that the occasionalism of Avicenna is ultimately based on the Neo-platonic doctrine of emanation.
This rebuilding of the notion of creature permits St. Thomas also to analyze the problems that Averroism was making more and more prominent. Philosophical truth was discovered by the Greeks and the Arabians neither completely nor adequately nor without error. What the Christian thinker must do in their presence is not to divide his allegiance between them and Christianity, but to discover the meaning of reason and the conditions of true thinking. That discovery will enable him to learn from the Greeks without also learning their errors; and it would thus show him the possibility of the harmony between reason and revelation. He must learn to be a philosopher, to discover the philosopher within the Christian man, in order to meet philosophers. In exploring the meaning of a creature, St. Thomas was building a philosophy which permitted his contemporaries (at least, if they listened to him) to free themselves from the old eternalistic and rigid world of the Greeks and to free their thinking, therefore, from the antinomies which this world could raise up for them. In the harmony of faith and reason which St. Thomas defended against Averroism, we must see the culminating point of his activity. For such a harmony meant ultimately not only a judicious and synthetic diagnosis of Greek philosophy, as well as a synthetic incorporation of Greek ideas in Christian thought, it meant also the final vindication of the humanism and the naturalism of Thomistic philosophy. The expression and the defense of this Christian humanism constitute one of St. Thomas' most enduring contributions to European thought.
-- A.C.P.
A quo: (Schol.) from which -- indicates the principle, starting point, from which something proceeds. To whom (ad quem) or to which (ad quod) indicates the terminus, the end point to which something tends. For whom (cui) indicates for whom something is done. Thus alms giving is done from charity, a quo; it tends to the relief of the poor, as ad quod; and it is a service done for God, as cui. -- H.G.
Arabesque: Originally a method of ornament consisting of fantastic lines. Recently, inner design of a form. -- L.V.
Arabic Philosophy: The contact of the Arabs with Greek civilization and philosophy took place partly in Syria, where Christian Arabic philosophy developed, partly in other countries, Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt and Spain. The effect of this contact was not a simple reception of Greek philosophy, but the gradual growth of an original mode of thought, determined chiefly by the religious and philosophical tendencies alive in the Arab world. Eastern influences had produced a mystical trend, not unlike Neo-Platonism; the already existing "metaphysics of light", noticeable in the religious conception of the Qoran, also helped to assimilate Plotinlan ideas. On the other hand, Aristotelian philosophy became important, although more, at least in the beginning, as logic and methodology.
The interest in science and medicine contributed to the spread of Aristotelian philosophy. The history of philosophy in the Arab world is determined by the increasing opposition of Orthodoxy against a more liberal theology and philosophy. Arab thought became influential in the Western world partly through European scholars who went to Spain and elsewhere for study, mostly however through the Latin translations which became more and more numerous at the end of the 12th and during the 13th centuries. Among the Christian Arabs Costa ben Luca (864-923) has to be mentioned whose De Differentia spiritus et animae was translated by Johannes Hispanus (12th century). The first period of Islamic philosophy is occupied mainly with translation of Greek texts, some of which were translated later into Latin. The Liber de causis (mentioned first by Alanus ab Insulis) is such a translation of an Arab text; it was believed to be by Aristotle, but is in truth, as Aquinas recognized, a version of the Stoicheiosis theologike by Proclus. The so-called Theologia Aristotelis is an excerpt of Plotinus Enn. IV-VI, written 840 by a Syrian. The fundamental trends of Arab philosophy are indeed Neo-Platonic, and the Aristotelian texts were mostly interpreted in this spirit. Furthermore, there is also a tendency to reconcile the Greek philosophers with theological notions, at least so long as the orthodox theologians could find no reason for opposition. In spite of this, some of the philosophers did not escape persecution. The Peripatetic element is more pronounced in the writings of later times when the technique of paraphrasis and commentary on Aristotelian texts had developed. Beside the philosophy dependent more or less on Greek, and partially even Christian influences, there is a mystical theology and philosophy whose sources are the Qoran, Indian and, most of all, Persian systems. The knowledge of the "Hermetic" writings too was of some importance.
Al Kindi, Al Farabi, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) were the first great philosophers who made large use of Aristotelian books. Their writings are of truly encyclopedic character and comprise the whole edifice of knowledge in their time. Their Aristotelianism is, however, mainly Neo-Platonism with addition of certain peripatetic notions. Avicenna is more of an Aristotelian than his predecessors. Al Farabi, e.g., held that cognition is ultimately due to an illumination, whereas Avicenna adopted a more Aristotelian theory. While these thinkers had an original philosophy, Averroes (Ibn Roshd) endeavored to clarify the meaning of the Aristotelian texts by extensive and minute commentaries. Translations from these writings first made known to medieval philosophy the non-logical works of the "Philosopher", although there existed, at the same time, some translations made directly from Greek
texts.
The mystical trend is represented mostly by Al Gazali who also wrote a report on the philosophies of Farabi and Avicenna followed by a devastating criticism, known as Destructio philosophorum, translated by Dominicus Gundissalinus. Gazali's criticisms were answered by Averroes in his Destructio destructionis.
The importance of Arab philosophy has to be
evaluated both in regard to the Oriental and the Western world. The latter was influenced,
naturally, not by the originals but by the translations which do not always render exactly the
spirit of the authors. In the East, theology remained victorious, but incorporated in its own
teachings much of the philosophies it condemned. M. Horten, in Ueberweg-Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophie, 3d ed., Berlin, 1928, pp. 287-342. Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Vol. I, II, Weimar, 1898-1902, Vol. III-VI, Leiden, 1936-1941. The Encyclopedia of Islam, Leiden, 1913-1918. -- R.A.
Arambha-vada: (Skr.) The theory of evolution expounded by the Nyaya and Vaisesika (q.v.), according to which atoms having been created combine to form the complex world, a sort of emergent evolution. -- K.F.L.
Aranyaka: (Skr.) One of early Indian treatises composed in the forest (aranya) by Brahmans
retired from life and devoting their time to an interpretation of the meaning of Vedic (q.v.)
ritual and usage. -- K.F.L.
Arbitrium, liberum: Livy used the expression, libera arbitria, signifying free decisions. Tertullian used either liberum arbitrium or libertas arbitrii, meaning freedom of choice. Augustine spoke of the liberum voluntatis arbitrium, free choice of the will. He held that voluntas and liberum are the same. Since liberum arbitrium implies the power to do evil, it is distinct from libertas, which is the good use of the liberum arbitrium. God is free, but He can do no wrong, Anselm preferred the term, libertas arbitrii. Thomas Aquinas taught that voluntas and liberum arbitrium are one potency. The expression has come to mean free will or choice. -- J.J.R.
Arbor Porphyrii: (Tree of Porphyry) A representation of the series leading from the individual by means of the numerical and specific differences (corporeal, animate, sentient, rational) to the genus subalternum et supremum. -- R.A.
Arcadic: Artificial art with the pretence of expressing pastoral simplicity. -- L.V.
Arcanum: An old term almost identical with occultism, its recent equivalent. Arcana were originally used to cover the sacred objects, such as the Playthings of Dionysus in the Eleusinian rites, and a cognate is ark, as in the Ark of the Covenant.
Arcesilaus: (315-241 B.C.) Greek philosopher from Pitane in Aeolis. He succeeded Crates in the chair of the Platonic Academy and became the founder of the second or so-called middle academy. In opposition to both Stoicism and Epicureanism, he advocated a scepticism that was not so extreme as that of Pyrrho although he despaired of man's attaining truth. Suspended judgment was to him the best approach. -- L.E.D.
Archaic: A style which is primitive and incomplete in comparison with a posterior style which is considered perfect and complete. -- L.V.
Archaism: A revival of archaic style as a result of dissatisfaction with a manner previously considered perfect. -- L.V.
Arche: (Gr. arche) The first in a series; that from which a thing either is or comes to be; origin; principle; first cause (Aristotle).
-- G.R.M.
Archelaus: A disciple of Anaxagoras; belonged to the Sophistic period; proclaimed the conventionality of all ethical judgments. He distinguished between man's natural impulses and dispositions and the dictates of human moral laws. The former he held to be superior guides to conduct. -- M.F.
Archelogy: The science of first principles.
-- C.A.B.
Archetype: (Gr. arche, first; and typos, form) The original pattern of forms of which actual things are copies. (Platonic). -- J.K.F.
Archeus: See Paracelsus. -- R.B.W.
Architectonic: (Kant) (Gr. architektonikos; Ger. Architektonik) The formal scheme, structural design, or method of elucidation of a system. The architectonic of Kant's system rests throughout the basic distinctions of the traditional logic. -- O.F.K.
Ardigo, Roberto: (1828-1920) Was the leader in the Italian positivistic movement in philosophy. He was born in Padua and educated as a Catholic priest, but he became interested in the views of Comte, abandoned the ministry and became a professor at the Univ. of Padua. His emphasis on psychology differentiates his thought from Comtism. Chief works: La psicologia come scienze positive (1870), La morale dei positivisti (1885). -- V.J.B.
Arete: See Virtue.
Aretology: That branch of ethics concerned with the nature of virtue. -- C.A.B.
Argument: See Function.
Argumentum a fortiori: An argument from analogy which shows that the proposition advanced is more admissible than one previously conceded by an opponent. -- J.J.R.
Argumentum ad baculum: An argument deriving its strength from appeal to human timidity or fears; it may contain, implicitly or explicitly, a threat. -- R.B.W.
Argumentum ad hominem: An irrelevant or malicious appeal to personal circumstances; it consists in diverting an argument from sound facts and reasons to the personality of one's opponent, competitor or critic. -- R.B.W.
Argumentum ad ignorantiam: An argument purporting to demonstrate a point or to persuade people, which avails itself of facts and reasons the falsity or inadequacy of which is not readily discerned; a misleading argument used in reliance on people's ignorance. -- R.B.W.
Argumentum ad judicium: A reasoning grounded on the common sense of mankind and the judgment of the people. -- J.J.R.
Argumentum ad misericordiam: An argument attempting to prove a point or to win a decision by appeal to pity and related emotions. -- R.B.W.
Argumentum ad populum: An argument attempting to sway popular feeling or to win people's support by appealing to their sentimental weaknesses; it may avail itself of patriotism, group interests and loyalties, and customary preferences, rather than of facts and reasons. -- R.B.W.
Argumentum ad rem: An argument to the point -- distinguished from such evasions as argumentum ad hominem (q.v.), etc. -- A.C.
Argumentum ad verecundiam: An argument availing itself of human respect for great men, ancient customs, recognized institutions, and authority in general, in order to strengthen one's point or to produce an illusion of proof.
-- R.B.W.
Argumentum ex concesso: An inference founded on a proposition which an opponent has already admitted. -- J.J.R.
Arianism: A view named after Arius (256-336), energetic presbyter of Alexandria, condemned as a heretic by the ancient Catholic Church. Arius held that Jesus and God were not of the same substance (the orthodox position). He maintained that although the Son was subordinate to the Father he was of a similar nature. The controversy on the relation of Jesus to God involved the question of the divine status of Jesus. If he were not divine how could the church justify him as an object of worship, of trust, and adoration? If he is divine, how could such a belief square with the doctrine of one God (monotheism)? Arianism tended toward the doctrine of the subordination of Jesus to God, involving the extreme Arians who held Jesus to be unlike God and the moderate Arians who held that Jesus was of similar essence with God although not of the same substance. Some eighteen councils were convened to consider this burning question, parties in power condemning and placing each other under the ban. The Council of Nicea in 325 repudiated Arian tendencies but the issue was fought with uncertain outcome until the Council of Constantinople in 381 reaffirmed the orthodox view. -- V.F.
Aristippus of Cyrene: (c. 435-366 B.C.) Originally a Sophist, then Socrates' disciple, and finally the founder of the Cyrenaic School. He taught that pleasure, understood as the sensation of gentle character, is the true end of life. All pleasures are equal in value, but differ in degree and duration; they should be controlled and moderated by reason. -- R.B.W.
Aristippus the younger: A grandson of Aristippus of Cyrene, the founder of the Cyrenaic School; author of a physiological psychology which sought to trace the origin of human feelings. See Cyrenaics. -- M.F.
Aristobulus: A philosopher of the second century B.C. who combined Greek philosophy with Jewish theology. -- M.F.
Aristocracy: 1. In its original and etymological meaning (Greek: aristos-best, kratos-power), the government by the best; and by extension, the class of the chief persons in a country. As the standards by which the best can be determined and selected may vary, it is difficult to give a general definition of this term (Cf. C. Lewis, Political Terms, X. 73). But in particular, the implications of aristocracy may be rational, historical, political, pragmatic or analogical.
2. In its rational aspect, as developed especially by Plato and Aristotle, aristocracy is the rule of the best few, in a true, purposeful, law-abiding and constitutional sense. As a political ideal, it is a form of government by morally and intellectually superior men for the common good or in the general interests of the governed, but without participation of the latter. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the best men for directing the life of the community, and of setting in motion the process of training and selecting such models of human perfection, aristocracy becomes practically the rule of those who are thought to be the best. [Plato himself proposed his ideal State as "a model fixed in the heavens" for human imitation but not attainment; and in the Laws he offered a combination of monarchy and democracy as the best working form of government.] Though aristocracy is a type of government external to the governed, it is opposed to oligarchy (despotic) and to timocracy (militaristic). With monarchy and democracy, it exhausts the classification of the main forms of rational government.
3. In its historical aspect, aristocracy is a
definite class or order known as hereditary nobility, which possesses prescriptive rank and
privileges. This group developed from primitive monarchy, by the gradual limitation of the regal authority by those who formed the council of the king. The defense of their prerogatives led them naturally to consider themselves as a separate class fitted by birthright to monopolize government. But at the same time, they assumed a number of corresponding obligations (hence the aphorism noblesse oblige) particularly for maintaining justice, peace and security. [The characteristics of hereditary aristocracy are:
- descent and birthright,
- breeding and education,
- power to command,
- administrative and military capacities,
- readiness to fulfill personal and national obligations,
- interest in field sports,
- social equality of its members,
- aloofness and exclusiveness,
- moral security in the possession of real values regardless of criticism, competition or advancement.]
In certain societies as in Great Britain, birth-right is not an exclusive factor: exceptional men are admitted by recognition into the aristocratic circle (circulation of the elite), after a tincture of breeding satisfying its external standards. The decline of hereditary nobility was due to economic rather than to social or political changes. Now aristocracy can claim only a social influence.
4. In its political aspect, aristocracy is a form of government in which the sovereign power
resides actually in a council composed of select persons (usually patricians), without a monarch, and exclusive of the common people (e.g. the Italian republics). It rules by decisions of the group arrived at by discussion; and tends to be absolute and oppressive.
5. In its pragmatic aspect, aristocracy is synonymous with the elite or the ruling class, and denotes those who hold active power in a totalitarian State. Their selection is by reference to some narrow and pragmatic principles of effective service to the State, of hierarchized leadership, or of training in accordance with the doctrines of the State.
6. In its analogical aspect, the term aristocracy if applied to the leading persons in a profession (intellectual or manual), who assume an attitude of exclusiveness or superiority on the strength of simply professional, religious or social motives,
-- T.G.
Aristotelianism: The philosophy of Aristotle, (384-322 B.C.). Aristotle was born in the Greek colony of Stagira, in Macedon, the son of Nicomachus, the physician of King Amyntas of Macedon. In his eighteenth year Aristotle became a pupil of Plato at Athens and remained for nearly twenty years a member of the Academy. After the death of Plato he resided for some time at Atarneus, in the Troad, and at Mitylene, on the island of Lesbos, with friends of the Academy; then for several years he acted as tutor to the young Alexander of Macedon. In 335 he returned to Athens, where he spent the following twelve years as head of a school which he set up in the Lyceum. The school also came to be known as the Peripatetic, and its members Peripatetics, probably because of the peripatos, or covered walk, in which Aristotle lectured. As a result of the outburst of anti-Macedonian feeling at Athens in 323 after the death of Alexander, Aristotle retired to Chalcis, m Euboea, where he died a year later.
The extant works of Aristotle cover almost all thc sciences known in his time. They are charactenzed by subtlety of analysis, sober and dispassionate judgment, and a wide mastery of empirical facts; collectively they constitute one of the most amazing achievements ever credited to a single mind. They may conveniently be arranged in seven groups:
- the Organon, or logical treatises, viz. Categories, De Interpretione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistici Elenchi;
- the writings on physical science, viz. Physics, De Coelo, De Generatione et Corruptione, and Meteorologica;
- the biological works, viz. Historia Animalium, De Partibus Animalium. De Motu and De Incessu Animalium, and De Generatione Animalium;
- the treatises on psychology, viz. De Anima and a collection of shorter works known as the Parva Naturalia;
- the Metaphysics;
- the treatises on ethics and politics, viz. Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Constitution of Athens; and
- two works dealing with the literary arts, Rhetoric and Poetics.
A large number of other works in these
several fields are usually included in the Aristotelian corpus, though they are now generally believed not to have been written by Aristotle. It is probable also that portions of the works above listed are the work, not of Aristotle, but of his contemporaries or successors in the Lyceum.
Besides these treatises there are extant a large
number of fragments of works now lost, some of them popular in character, others memoranda
or collections of materials made in preparation for the systematic treatises. The most noteworthy member of the second class is the work dealing with the constitutions of one hundred fifty-eight Greek states, of which one part alone, the Constitution of Athens, has been preserved.
The standard edition of the Greek text is that of Bekker (5 vols. Berlin, 1831-1870). A complete English translation of the works included in the Berlin edition has recently been published (Oxford, 1908-1931) under the editorship of W. D. Ross.
Aristotle divides the sciences into the theoretical, the practical and the productive, the aim of the first being disinterested knowledge, of the second the guidance of conduct, and of the third the guidance of the arts. The science now called logic, by him known as "analytic", is a discipline preliminary to all the others, since its purpose is to set forth the conditions that must be observed by all thinking which has truth as its aim. Science, in the strict sense of the word, is demonstrated knowledge of the causes of things. Such demonstrated knowledge is obtained by syllogistic deduction from premises in themselves certain. Thus the procedure of science differs from dialectic, which employs probable premises, and from eristic, which aims not at truth but at victory in disputation. The center, therefore, of Aristotle's logic is the syllogism, or that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them. The basis of syllogistic inference is the presence of a term common to both premises (the middle term) so related as subj ect or predicate to each of the other two terms that a conclusion may be drawn regarding the relation of these two terms to one another. Aristotle was the first to formulate the theory of the syllogism, and his minute analysis of its various forms was definitive, so far as the subject-predicate relation is concerned; so that to this part of deductive logic but little has been added since his day. Alongside of deductive reasoning Aristotle recognizes the necessity of induction, or the process whereby premises, particularly first premises, are established. This involves passing from the particulars of sense experience (the things more knowable to us) to the universal and necessary principles involved in sense experience (the things more knowable in themselves). Aristotle attaches most importance, in this search for premises, to the consideration of prevailing beliefs (endoxa) and the examination of the difficulties (aporiai) that have been encountered in the solution of the problem in hand. At some stage in the survey of the field and the theories previously advanced the universal connection sought for is apprehended; and apprehended, Aristotle eventually says, by the intuitive reason, or nous. Thus knowledge ultimately rests upon an indubitable intellectual apprehension; yet for the proper employment of the intuitive reason a wide empirical acquaintance with the subject-matter is indispensable.
The causes which it is the aim of scientific inquiry to discover are of four sorts: the material cause (that of which a thing is made), the efficient cause (that by which it comes into being), the formal cause (its essence or nature, i.e. what it is), and the final cause (its end, or that for which it exists). In natural objects, as distinct from the products of art, the last three causes coincide; for the end of a natural object is the realization of its essence, and likewise it is this identical essence embodied in another individual that is the efficient cause in its production. Thus for Aristotle every object in the sense world is a union of two ultimate principles: the material constituents, or matter (hyle), and the form, structure, or essence which makes of these constituents the determinate kind of being it is. Nor is this union an external or arbitrary one; for the matter is in every case to be regarded as possessing the capacity for the form, as being potentially the formed matter. Likewise the form has being only in the succession of its material embodiments. Thus Aristotle opposes what he considers to be the Platonic doctrine that real being belongs only to the forms or universals, whose existence is independent of the objects that imperfectly manifest them. On the other hand, against the earlier nature-philosophies that found their explanatory principles in matter, to the neglect of form, Aristotle affirms that matter must be conceived as a locus of determinate potentialities that become actualized only through the activity of forms.
With these principles of matter and form, and the parallel distinction between potential and actual existence, Aristotle claims to have solved the difficulties that earlier thinkers had found in the fact of change. The changes in nature are to be interpreted not as the passage from non-being to being, which would make them unintelligible, but as the process by which what is merely potential being passes over, through form, into actual being, or entelechy. The philosophy of nature which results from these basic concepts views nature as a dynamic realm in which change is real, spontaneous, continuous, and in the main directed. Matter, though indeed capable of form, possesses a residual inertia which on occasion produces accidental effects; so that alongside the teological causation of the forms Aristotle recognizes what he calls "necessity" in nature; but the products of the latter, since they are aberrations from form, cannot be made the object of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the system of nature as developed by Aristotle is a graded series of existences, in which the simpler beings, though in themselves formed matter, function also as matter for higher forms. At the base of the series is prime matter, which as wholly unformed is mere potentiality, not actual being. The simplest formed matter is the so-called primary bodies -- earth, water, air and fire. From these as matter arise by the intervention of successively more complex forms the composite inorganic bodies, organic tissues, and the world of organisms, characterized by varying degrees of complexity in structure and function. In this realization of form in matter Aristotle distinguishes three sorts of change: qualitative
change, or alteration; quantitative change, or growth and diminution; and change, of place, or locomotion, the last being primary, since it is presupposed in all the others. But Aristotle is far from suggesting a mechanical explanation of change, for not even locomotion can be explained by impact alone. The motion of the primary bodies is due to the fact that each has its natural place to which it moves when not opposed; earth to the center, then water, air, and fire to successive spheres about the center. The ceaseless motion of these primary bodies results from their ceaseless transformation into one another through the interaction of the forms of hot and cold, wet and dry. Thus qualitative differences of form underlie even the most elemental changes in the world of nature.
It is in his biology that the distinctive concepts of Aristotle show to best advantage. The conception of process as the actualization of determinate potentiality is well adapted to the comprehension of biological phenomena, where the immanent teleology of structure and function is almost a part of the observed facts. It is here also that the persistence of the form, or species, through a succession of individuals is most strikingly evident. His psychology is scarcely separable from his biology, since for Aristotle (as for Greek thought generally) the soul is the principle of life; it is "the primary actualization of a natural organic body." But souls differ from one another in the variety and complexity of the functions they exercise, and this difference in turn corresponds to differences in the organic structures involved. Fundamental to all other physical activities are the functions of nutrition, growth and reproduction, which are possessed by all living beings, plants as well as animals. Next come sensation, desire, and locomotion, exhibited in animals in varying degrees. Above all are deliberative choice and theoretical inquiry, the exercise of which makes the rational soul, peculiar to man among the animals. Aristotle devotes special attention to the various activities of the rational soul. Sense perception is the faculty of receiving the sensible form of outward objects without their matter. Besides the five senses Aristotle posits a "common sense," which enables the rational soul to unite the data of the separate senses into a single object, and which also accounts for the soul's awareness of these very activities of perception and of its other states. Reason is the faculty of apprehending the universals and first principles involved in all knowledge, and while helpless without sense perception it is not limited to the concrete and sensuous, but can grasp the universal and the ideal. The reason thus described as apprehending the intelligible world is in one difficult passage characterized as passive reason, requiring for its actualization a higher informing reason as the source of all intelligibility in things and of realized intelligence in man.
The necessity of assuming such a supreme form appears also from the side of physics. Since every movement or change implies a mover, and since the chain of causes cannot be infinite if the world is to be intelligible, there must be
an unmoved first mover. Furthermore, since motion is eternal (for time is eternal, and time is but the measure of motion), the first mover must be eternal. This eternal unmoved first mover, whose existence is demanded by physical theory, is described in the Metaphysics as the philosophical equivalent of the god or gods of popular religion. Being one, he is the source of the unity of the world process. In himself he is pure actuality, the only form without matter, the only being without extension. His activity consists in pure thought, that is, thought which has thought for its object; and he influences the world not by mechanical impulse, but by virtue of the perfection of his being, which makes him not only the supreme object of all knowledge, but also the ultimate object of all desire.
In the Ethics these basic principles are applied to the solution of the question of human good. The good for man is an actualization, or active exercise, of those faculties distinctive of man, that is the faculties of the rational, as distinct from the vegetative and sensitive souls. But human excellence thus defined shows itself in two forms, In the habitual subordination of sensitive and appetitive tendencies to rational rule and principle, and in the exercise of reason in the search for and contemplation of truth. The former type of excellence is expressed in the moral virtues, the latter in the dianoetic or intellectual virtues. A memorable feature of Aristotle's treatment of the moral virtues is his theory that each of them may be regarded as a mean between excess and defect; courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and rashness, liberality a mean between stinginess and prodigality. In the Politics Aristotle sets forth the importance of the political community as the source and sustainer of the typically human life. But for Aristotle the highest good for man is found not in the political life, nor in any other form of practical activity, but in theoretical inquiry and contemplation of truth. This alone brings complete and continuous happiness, because it is the activity of the highest part of man's complex nature, and of that part which is least dependent upon externals, viz. the intuitive reason, or nous. In the contemplation of the first principles of knowledge and being man participates in that activity of pure thought which constitutes the eternal perfection of the divine nature.
The philosophy of Aristotle was continued after his death by other members of the Peripatetic school, the most important of whom were Theophrastus, Eudemus of Rhodes, and Strato of Lampsacus. In the Alexandrian Age, particularly after the editing of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes (about 50 B.C.), Aristotelianism was the subject of numerous expositions and commentaries, such as those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, John Philoponus, and Simplicius. With the closing of the philosophical schools in the sixth century the knowledge of Aristotle, except for fragments of the logical doctrine, almost disappeared in the west. It was preserved, however, by Arabian
and Syrian scholars; from whom, with the revival of learning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it passed again to western Europe and became in Thomas Aquinas the philosophical basis of Christian theology. For the next few centuries the prestige of Aristotle was immense; he was "the philosopher," "the master of those who know." With the rise of modern science his authority has greatly declined. Yet Aristotelianism is still a force in modern thought: in Neo-Scholasticism; in recent psychology, whose behavioristic tendencies are in part a revival of Aristotelian modes of thought; in the various forms of vitalism in contemporary biology; in the dynamism of such thinkers as Bergson; and in the more catholic naturalism which has succeeded the mechanistic materialism of the last century, and which, whether by appeal to a doctrine of levels or by emphasis on immanent teleology, seems to be striving along Aristotelian lines for a conception of nature broad enough to include the religious, moral and artistic consciousness. Finally, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and in philosophy, is but the translation into modern tongues of the terms used by Aristotle, and carries with it, for better or worse, the distinctions worked out in his subtle mind. -- G.R.M.
Aristotle, medieval: Contrary to the esteem in which the Fathers held Platonic and especially Neo-Platonic philosophy, Aristotle plays hardly any role in early Patristic and Scholastic writings. Augustine seems not to have known much about him and admired him more as logician whereas he held Plato to be the much greater philosopher. The Middle Ages knew, until the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, only the logical texts, mostly in the translations made by Boethius of the texts and of the introduction by Porphyrius (Isagoge). During the latter third of the 12th, mostly however at the beginning of the 13th century appeared translations partly from Arabian texts and commentaries, partly from the Greek originals. Finally, Aquinas had William of Moerbeke translate the whole work of Aristotle, who soon came to be known as the Philosopher. Scholastic Aristotelianism is, however, not a simple revival of the Peripatetic views; Thomas is said to have "Christianized" the Philosopher as Augustine had done with Plato. Aristotle was differently interpreted by Aquinas and by the Latin Averroists (q.v. Averroism), especially in regard to the "unity of intellect" and the eternity of the created world. -- R.A.
Aristotle's Dictum (or the Dictum de Omni et Nullo): The maxim that whatever may be predicated (i.e. affirmed or denied) of a whole may be predicated of any part of that whole; traditionally attributed to Aristotle, though perhaps on insufficient grounds. See Joseph, Introduction to Logic, p. 296, note. See also Dictum de Omni et Nullo. -- G.R.M.
Aristotle's Experiment: An experiment frequently referred to by Aristotle in which an object held between two crossed fingers of the same hand is felt as two objects. De Somniis 460b 20; Metaphysics 1011a 33; Problems 958b 14, 959a, 15, 965a 36. -- G.R.M.
Aristotle's Illusion: See Aristotle's Experiment.
Arithmetic, foundations of: Arithmetic (i.e., the mathematical theory of the non-negative integers, 0, 1, 2, . . .) may be based on the five following postulates, which are due to Peano (and Dedekind, from whom Peano's ideas were partly derived):
N(0)
N(x) ⊃x N(S(x)).
N(x) ⊃x [N(y) ⊃y [[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃x [x = y]]].
N(x) ⊃x ∼[S(x) = 0].
F(0)[N(x)F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F
[N(x) ⊃x F(x)]
The undefined terms are here 0, N, S, which may be interpreted as denoting, respectively, the non-negative integer 0, the propositional function to be a non-negative integer, and the function +1 (so that S(x) is x+l). The underlying logic may be taken to be the functional calculus of second order (Logic, formal, § 6), with the addition of notations for descriptions and for functions from individuals to individuals, and the individual constant 0, together with appropriate modifications and additions to the primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference (the axiom of infinity is not needed because the Peano postulates take its place). By adding the five postulates of Peano as primitive formulas to this underlying logic, a logistic system is obtained which is adequate to extant elementary number theory (arithmetic) and to all methods of proof which have found actual employment in elementary number theory (and are normally considered to belong to elementary number theory). But of course, the system, if consistent, is incomplete in the sense of Gödel's theorem (Logic, formal, § 6).
If the Peano postulates are formulated on the basis of an interpretation according to which the domain of individuals coincides with that of the non-negative integers, the undefined term N may be dropped and the postulates reduced to the three following:
(x)(y)[[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃[x = y]].
(x) ∼[S(x) = 0].
F(0)[F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F (x)F(y).
It is possible further to drop the undefined term 0 and to replace the successor function S by a dyadic propositional function S (the contemplated interpretation being that S(x,y) is the proposition y = x+l). The Peano postulates may then be given the following form:
(x)(Ey)S(x, y).
(x)[S(x,y) ⊃y [S(x,z) ⊃x [y = z]]].
(x)[S(y,x) ⊃y [S(z,x) ⊃x [y = z]]].
(Ex)[[(x) ∼S(x,y)] ≡y [y = z]].
[(x) ∼S(x,z)] ⊃x [F(z)[F(x) ⊃x [S(x, y) ⊃y F(y)]] ⊃F (x)F(x)].
For this form of the Peano postulates the underlying logic may be taken to be simply the functional calculus of second order without additions. In this formulation, numerical functions can be introduced only by contextual definition as incomplete symbols.
In the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic (see the article Mathematics) necessity for the postulates of Peano is avoided. If based on the theory of types, however, this derivation requires some form of the axiom of infinity -- which may be regarded as a residuum of the Peano postulates.
See further the articles Recursion, definition by, and Recursion, proof by. -- A.C.
B. Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, London, 1919.
Arithmetic mean: The simple average. Thus the arithmetic mean of n quantities is the sum of these quantities divided by n. Contrast with geometric mean. -- C.A.B.
Ars Combinatoria: (Leibniz) An art or technique of deriving or inventing complex concepts by a combination of a relatively few simple ones taken as primitive. This technique was proposed as a valuable subject for study by Leibniz in De Arte Combinatoria (1666) but was never greatly developed by him. Leibniz's program for logic consisted of two main projects: (1) the development of a universal characteristic (characteristica universalis), and (2) the development of a universal mathematics (mathesis universalis (q.v.). The universal characteristic was to be a universal language for scientists and philosophers. With a relatively few basic symbols for the ultimately simple ideas, and a suitable technique for constructing compound ideas out of the simple ones, Leibniz thought that a language could be constructed which would be much more efficient for reasoning and for communication than the vague, complicated, and more or less parochial languages then available. This language would be completely universal in the sense that all scientific and philosophical concepts could be expressed in it, and also in that it would enable scholars m all countries to communicate over the barriers of their vernacular tongues. Leibniz's proposals in this matter, and what work he did on it, are the grand predecessors of a vast amount of research which has been done in the last hundred years on the techniques of language construction, and specifically on the invention of formal rules and procedures for introducing new terms into a language on the basis of terms already present, the general project of constructing a unified language for science and philosophy. L. Couturat, La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901; C. I. Lewis, A Survey of Symbolic Logic, Berkeley, 1918.
-- F.L.W.
Ars magna Raymundi: A device by which Raymundus Lullus, Ramon Lul, thought to arrive at all possible conclusions from certain given principles or notions. A very imperfect precursor of Leibniz's mathesis universalis. See Lullic art.
-- R.A.
Art: (Gr. techne) (See Aesthetics) In Aristotle the science or knowledge of the principles involved in the production of beautiful or useful objects. As a branch of knowledge art is distinguished both from theoretical science and from practical wisdom; as a process of production it is contrasted with nature. -- G.R.M.
In its narrower meaning, the fine arts and
literature. The problem of the distinction and classification of the arts originated with Lessing in reaction to the interference of poetical values in painting and vice versa. He distinguished poetry dealing with consecutive actions from painting concerned with figures coexisting in space. Later, aestheticians divided the arts into many classifications. Zimmermann, a pupil of Herbart, distinguished three groups:
- arts of material representation (architecture, sculpture, etc.),
- arts of perceptive representation (painting, music).
- arts of the representation of thought (poetry).
This partition suggested to Fiedler the aesthetics of pure visibility, to Hanslick the aesthetics of pure musicality. And from Fiedler's idea was derived the so-called Science of Art independent of aesthetics. -- L.V.
Art impulse: A term to account for the origin of all matter falling under the consideration of aesthetics by describing it as due to non-intellectualistic, psychical urges, thoroughly dynamic in nature, such as desire to imitate, proneness to please, exhibitionism, play, utilization of surplus vital energy, emotional expression, or compensation. -- K.F.L.
Asana: (Skr.) "Sitting"; posture, an accessory to the proper discipline of mind and thinking deemed important by the Yoga and other systems of Indian philosophy, according to psycho-physical presuppositions. -- K.F.L.
Asat: (Skr.) "Non-being", a school concept dating back to Vedic (q.v.) times. It offers a theory of origination according to which being (sat; q.v.) was produced from non-being in the beginning; it was rejected by those who believe in being as the logical starting point in metaphysics. -- K.F.L.
Asceticism: (Gr. askesis, exercise) The view -- now and then appearing in conjunction with religion, particularly the Christian and Buddhistic one, or the striving for personal perfection or salvation, for self and others -- that the body is an evil and a detriment to a moral, spiritual, and god-pleasing life. Hence the negative adjustments to natural functions, desires, and even needs, manifesting themselves in abnegation of pleasures, denial of enjoyments, non-gratification of the senses, stifling of physical cravings, as well as self-torture which is meant to allay or kill off physical and worldly longings by destroying their root, in preparation for a happier, perhaps desireless future, in a post mortem existence. -- K.F.L.
Aseitas: (Lat.) Being by and of itself, asserted only of God. All other beings are dependent in their existence on God as creator, they are ab alio. -- R.A.
Asmita: (Skr. "I am-ness") A kind of egoism repudiated by the Yogasutras (q.v.) in which lower states of mind are presumed to be the self or purusa. -- K.F.L.
Asomatica: (Gr. a + soma, body, Disembodied) The condition of a mind after separation from its body. -- L.W.
Assent: The act of the intellect adhering to a
truth because of the evidence of the terms; a proof of the reason (medium rationale) or the command of the will. -- H.G.
Assertion: Frege introduced the assertion sign, in 1879, as a means of indicating the difference between asserting a proposition as true and merely naming a proposition (e.g., in order to make an assertion about it, that it has such and such consequences, or the like). Thus, with an appropriate expression A, the notation |−A would be used to make the assertion, "The unlike magnetic poles attract one another," while the notation −A would correspond rather to the noun clause, "that the unlike magnetic poles attract one another." Later Frege adopted the usage that propositional expressions (as noun clauses) are proper names of truth values and modified his use of the assertion sign accordingly, employing say A (or −A) to denote the truth value thereof that the unlike magnetic poles attract one another and |−A to express the assertion that this truth value is truth.
The assertion sign was adopted by Russell, and by Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica, in approximately Frege's sense of 1879, and it is from this source that it has come into general use. Some recent writers omit the assertion sign, either as understood, or on the ground that the Frege-Russell distinction between asserted and unasserted propositions is illusory. Others use the assertion sign in a syntactical sense, to express that a formula is a theorem of a logistic system (q.v.); this usage differs from that of Frege and Russell in that the latter requires the assertion sign to be followed by a formula denoting a proposition, or a truth value, while the former requires it to be followed by the syntactical name of such a formula.
In the propositional calculus, the name law of assertion is given to the theorem:
p ⊃ [[p ⊃ q] &sup q].
(The associated form of inference from A and A ⊃ B to B is, however, known rather as modus ponens.) -- A.C.
The act of declaring a proposition or propositional form to be true (or to be necessarily true, or to be a part of a system).
Assertoric: See Modality.
Assertoric knowledge: Knowledge of what is actual or occurring, as opposed to knowledge of what might occur or is capable of occurring, or of what must occur; opposed to problematic knowledge and apodictic knowledge. -- A.C.B.
Association: (Lat. ad + socius, companion) The psychological phenomenon of connection or union between different items in consciousness. The term has been applied to two distinct types of connection: (a) the natural or original connection between sensations which together constitute a single perception and (b) the acquired connection whereby one sensation or idea tends to reinstate another idea. The first type of connection has sometimes been called simultaneous association and the second type successive association, but this terminology is misleading since successively apprehended sensations are
often conjoined into the unity of a perception, e.g. the bell which I saw a moment ago and the sound which I now hear, while, on the other hand, an idea may in certain cases be contemporaneous with the sensation or idea by which it is revived. The dual application of the term association to both natural and acquired association was made by J. Locke: "Some of our ideas," says Locke "have a natural correspondence or connection with one another . . . Besides this there is another connection of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom." Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) Bk. II, ch. 33. The usage of later authors, however, tends to restrict the term association to acquired connection ((b) above) and to adopt some other expression such as cohesion, correlation (see Correlation, Sensory) or combination (see Combination) to designate natural connections ((a) above).
A further distinction is drawn between two subvarieties of acquired association viz. spontaneous or free association, in which the revival of associated ideas proceeds by chance and voluntary or controlled association in which it is guided by a dominant purpose. The distinction between chance and voluntary association was also recognized by Locke: "The strong combination of ideas not allied by nature makes itself either voluntarily or by chance." (Ibid.)
The phenomenon of acquired association has long been recognized by philosophers. Plato cites examples of association by contiguity and similarity (Phaedo, 73-6) and Aristotle in his treatment of memory enumerated similarity, contrast and contiguity as relations which mediate recollection. (De Mem. II 6-11 (451 b)). Hobbes also was aware of the psychological importance of the phenomenon of association and anticipated Locke's distinct!p/n between chance and controlled association (Leviathan (1651), ch. 3; Human Nature (1650), ch. 4). But it was Locke who introduced the phrase "association of ideas" and gave impetus to modern association psychology.
Following Locke, the phenomenon of association was investigated by G. Berkeley and D. Hume both of whom were especially concerned with the relations mediating association. Berkeley enumerates similarity, causality and coexistence or contiguity (Theory of Vision Vindicated (1733), § 39); Hume resemblance, contiguity in time or place and cause or effect (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), § 3; Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Bk. I, Pt. I, § 4). English associationism is further developed by D. Hartley, Observations on Man (1749), esp. Prop. XII; J. Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829), esp. Ch. 3; A. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect (1855); J. S. Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865). Continental exponents of association psychology are E. B. de Condillac (Essai sur l'origines de connaissances humaines) (1746); Traite de sensations (1754); J. F. Herbart Lehrbuch der Psychologie (1816). -- L.W.
Association, Laws of: The psychological laws in accordance with which association takes place. The classical enumeration of the laws of association is contained in Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia, II, 451, b 18-20 which lists similarity, contrast and contiguity as the methods of reviving memories. Hume (A Treatise on Human Nature, Part I, § 4 and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §3) slightly revised the Aristotelian list by enumerating as the sole principles of association, resemblance, contiguity in time or place and causality; contrast was considered by Hume, "a mixture of causation and resemblance." -- L.W.
Associationism: A theory of the structure and organization of mind which asserts that: (a) every mental state is resolvable into simple, discrete components (See Mind-Stuff Theory, Psychological Atomism) and (b) the whole of the mental life is explicable by the combination and recombination of these elemental states in conformity with the laws of association of ideas. (See Association, Laws of). Hume (Treatise on Human Nature, 1739) and Hartley (Observations on Man, 1749) may be considered the founders of associationism of which James Mill, J. S. Mill and A. Bain are later exponents. -- L.W.
Associationist Psychology: See Associationism.
-- L.W.
Associative law: Any law of the form,
x o (y o z) = (x o y) o z,
where o is a dyadic operation (function) and x o y is the result of applying the operation to x and y (the value of the function for the arguments x and y). Instead of the sign of equality, there may also appear the sign of the biconditional (in the propositional calculus), or of other relations having properties similar to equality in the discipline in question.
In arithmetic there are two associative laws, of addition and of multiplication:
x + (y + z) = (x + y) + z.
x X (y X z) = (x X y) X z.
Associative laws of addition and of multiplication hold also in the theory of real numbers, the theory of complex numbers, and various other mathematical disciplines.
In the propositional calculus there are the four following associative laws (two dually related pairs):
[p ∨ [q ∨ r]] ≡ [[p ∨ q] ∨ r].
[p[qr]] ≡ [[qp]r].
[p +[q + r]] ≡ [[p + q] + r].
[p ≡ [q ≡ r]] ≡ [[p ≡ q] ≡ r].
Also four corresponding laws in the algebra of classes.
As regards exclusive disjunction in the propositional calculus, the caution should be noted that, although p + q is the exclusive disjunction of p and q, and although + obeys an associative law, nevertheless [p + q] + r is not the exclusive disjunction of the three propositions p, q, r -- but is rather, "Either all three or one and one only of p, q, r." -- A.C.
Assumption: A proposition which is taken or posed in order to draw inferences from it; or the act of so taking, posing, or assuming a
proposition. The motive for an assumption may be (but need not necessarily be) a belief in the truth, or possible truth, of the proposition assumed; or the motive may be an attempt to refute the proposition by reductio ad absurdum (q.v.). The word assumption has also sometimes been used as a synonym of axiom, or postulate (see the article Mathematics). -- A.C.
Astika: (Skr.) "Orthodox"; one acknowledging the authority of the Veda (q.v,). -- K.F.L.
Astikaya: (Skr.) Bodily or extended substance. In Jaina philosophy only time is not (anasti, the negation of asti) like a body (kaya), hence non-extended. -- K.F.L.
Ataraxia: The Epicurean doctrine that the complete peace of mind was a pleasurable state of equilibrium. See Epicureanism. -- E.H.
Atheism: (Gr. a, no; theos, god) Two uses of the term:
- The belief that there is no God.
- Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic."
The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term although widely current in the history of thought. -- V.F.
Atman: (Skr.) Self, soul, ego, or I. Variously conceived in Indian philosophy, atomistically (cf. anu); monadically, etherially, as the hypothetical carrier of karma (q.v.), identical with the divine (cf. ayam atma brahma; tat tvam asi) or different from yet dependent on it, or as a metaphysical entity to be dissolved at death and reunited with the world ground. As the latter it is defined as "smaller than the small" (anor aniyan) or "greater than the great" (mahato mahiyan), i.e., magnitudeless as well as infinitely great.
-- K.F.L.
Atomism:
- As contrasted with synechism, the view that there are discrete irreducible elements of finite spatial or temporal span. E.g., the atomic doctrine of Democritus that the real world consists of qualitatively similar atoms of diverse shapes. Lucretius, De Natura Rerurn. See Epicurus. Cf. K. Lasswitz, Gesch. d. Atomismus.
- As contrasted with the view that certain elements are necessarily connected, or even related at all, the doctrine that some entities are only contingently related or are completely independent. In Russell (Scientific Method in Philosophy), Logical Atomism is the view that relations are external and that some true propositions are without simpler constituents in a given system, such propositions are "basic" with respect to that system. In political philosophy, atomism is syn. of particularism.
- As contrasted with the view that certain entities are analyzable, the doctrine that some entitles are ultimately simple. E.g., Russell's doctrine that there are certain simple, unanalyzable atomic propositions of which other propositions are constituted by compounding or generalization.
-- C.A.B.
A consistent atomistic theory of nature or even of bodily substances is hardly found in
medieval texts with the exception of William of Conches' Philosophia mundi and the Mutakallemins, a Moslem school of atomists. -- R.A.
Atomism, psychological: See Psychological Atomism.
Atonement: Religious act of expressing consciousness of one's sins, penitence, reconciliation, giving satisfaction. Specifically, a theological doctrine meaning the reconciliation between God and man who had sinned against God, hence given offense to Him. This was effected through the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God, His sufferings and death on the cross, who consequently is the Saviour and Redeemer of the human race. This voluntary death and vicarious sacrifice constituted a full reparation for the sins of humanity and satisfied the debt to divine justice, thus making it again possible for men to attain eternal happiness in heaven. -- J.J.R.
Attention: (Lat. ad + tendere, to stretch) The concentration of the mind upon selected portions of the field of consciousness thereby conferring upon the selected items, a peculiar vividness and clarity. The field of attention may be divided into two parts:
- the focus of attention, where the degree of concentration of attention is maximal and
- the fringe of attention, where the degree of attention gradually diminishes to zero at the periphery.
Attention considered with respect to its genesis, is of two types:
- involuntary, passive or spontaneous attention, which is governed by external stimulus or internal association of ideas and
- voluntary, controlled or directed attention which is guided by the subject's purpose or intention.
-- L.W.
Attention, Span of: The number of simultaneous or successive items or groups of items which can be attended to by a single act of thought; the number varies from individual to individual and for the same individual at different times. -- L.W.
Attitude: (Ger. Einstellung) In Husserl: A habitual positing or neutral intending by the ego. The natural attitude: the fundamental protodoxic attitude of the transcendental ego towards the world. The natural attitude underlies and enters into all other positings except those of the transcendental ego in the transcendental-phenomenological attitude. -- D.C.
Attribute:
- Commonly, what is proper to a thing (Latm, ad-tribuere, to assign, to ascribe, to bestow). Loosely assimilated to a quality, a property, a characteristic, a peculiarity, a circumstance, a state, a category, a mode or an accident, though there are differences among all these terms. For example, a quality is an inherent property (the qualities of matter), while an attribute refers to the actual properties of a thing only indirectly known (the attributes of God). Another difference between attribute and quality is that the former refers to the characteristics of an infinite being, while the latter is used for the characteristics of a finite being.
- In metaphysics, an attribute is what is indispensable to a spiritual or material substance;
or that which expresses the nature of a thing; or that without which a thing is unthinkable. As such, it implies necessarily a relation to some substance of which it is an aspect or conception. But it cannot be a substance, as it does not exist by itself. The transcendental attributes are those which belong to a being because it is a being: there are three of them, the one, the true and the good, each adding something positive to the idea of being. The word attribute has been and still is used more readily, with various implications, by substantialist systems. In the 17th century, for example, it denoted the actual manifestations of substance. [Thus, Descartes regarded extension and thought as the two ultimate, simple and original attributes of reality, all else being modifications of them. With Spinoza, extension and thought became the only known attributes of Deity, each expressing in a definite manner, though not exclusively, the infinite essence of God as the only substance. The change in the meaning of substance after Hume and Kant is best illustrated by this quotation from Whitehead: "We diverge from Descartes by holding that what he has described as primary attributes of physical bodies, are really the forms of internal relationships between actual occasions and within actual occasions" (Process and Reality, p. 471).] The use of the notion of attribute, however, is still favoured by contemporary thinkers. Thus, John Boodin speaks of the five attributes of reality, namely: Energy (source of activity), Space (extension), Time (change), Consciousness (active awareness), and Form (organization, structure).
- In theodicy, the term attribute is used for the essential characteristics of God. The divine attributes are the various aspects under which God is viewed, each being treated as a separate perfection. As God is free from composition, we know him only in a mediate and synthetic way thrgugh his attributes.
- In logic, an attribute is that which is predicated or anything, that which Is affirmed or denied of the subject of a proposition. More specifically, an attribute may be either a category or a predicable; but it cannot be an individual materially. Attributes may be essential or accidental, necessary or contingent.
- In grammar, an attribute is an adjective, or an adjectival clause, or an equivalent adjunct expressing a characteristic referred to a subject through a verb. Because of this reference, an attribute may also be a substantive, as a class-name, but not a proper name as a rule. An attribute is never a verb, thus differing from a predicate which may consist of a verb often having some object or qualifying words.
- In natural history, what is permanent and essential in a species, an individual or in its parts.
- In psychology, it denotes the way (such as intensity, duration or quality) in which sensations, feelings or images can differ from one another.
- In art, an attribute is a material or a conventional symbol, distinction or decoration.
-- T.G.
Attributes, differentiating: Are special, simple, not essential to a substance, which if they belong to any complex substance as a whole belong also to its parts. (Broad). -- H.H.
Auctoritas: St. Augustine distinguishes divine from human authority: Auctoritas autem partim divina est, partim humana: sed vera, firma, summa ea est quae divina nominatur. Thus God is the highest authority. It is distinctly advantageous to rely on authority: Auctoritati credere magnum compendium. est, nullus labor. Both authority and reason impel us to learn: Nulli autem dubium est gemino pondere nos impelli ad discendum, auctoritatis atque rationis. -- J.J.R.
Aufklärung:
- In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784).
- In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an
impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought.
- More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. -- T.G.
Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.
St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.
Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.
Things have forms because they have numbers,
and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.
S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). -- E.C.
Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").
This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines.
-- T.G.
Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. -- A.C.B.
Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. -- A.C.B.
Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism.
Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).
(b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. -- L.W.
Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. -- L.W.
Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) -- L.W.
Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. -- W.K.F.
Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. -- P.A.S.
Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself -- for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. -- A.C.
Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. -- K.F.L.
Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics -- the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of
numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.
Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works:
Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. -- H.H.
Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by
Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their
texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. -- R.A.
Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already
Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219
theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the
created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth
theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false.
Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical
proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.
Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). -- R.A.
Avesta: See Zendavesta.
Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians
also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and
the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl.
Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z.
Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. -- R.A.
Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to
several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of
abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation
is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. -- R.A.
Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. -- K.F.L.
Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal
(aja, unborn). -- K.F.L.
Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to,
the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. -- L.W.
Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). -- D.C.
Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics.
-- W.K.F.
Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. -- J.K.F.
Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."
In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.
In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur
Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).
Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.
The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.
(1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).
(2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.
(3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.
(4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze,
Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:
- subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);
- logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);
- metaphysical objectivism (values -- or norms or ideals -- are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman).
-- E.S.B.
Axiom: See Mathematics.
Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. -- C.A.B.
Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. -- K.F.L.