Erfahrung und Beweis. Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert

Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, geb. 1952, ist Professor für Philosophie und Vizepräsident an der Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Mit Beiträgen von: Ermenegildo Bidese, Wolfgang Detel, Alexander Fidora, Jeremiah Hackett, Peter Hoffmann, Theodor W. Köhler, Gerhard Krieger, Gerhard Leibold, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Steven Marrone, Pietro B. Rossi, Andreas Speer, Leen Spruit, Edith Sylla, Cecilia Trifogli, Miira Tuominen und Dorothée Werner

"No sólo se nos ofrece una visión panorámica sobre el significado y el alcance de sol debates epistemológicos respecto de las ciencias de la naturaleza de aquel tiempo, sino que también se abren a la vez perspectivas sistemáticas acerca de cuestiones epistemológicas actuales, como el problema de la inducción, de la subordinación y de la aplicación de las ciencias." in: Diálogo Filosófico, 24. JG., April 2008, Heft 1 "Diese [...] Sammlung von Beiträgen liefert eine gewichtige, sorgfältige Korrektur von vielen Vorurteilen über die Naturphilosophie des 13. und 14. Jh.s. Sie ist daher von der Forschung zu begrüßen." Peter Schulthess in: Theologische Literaturzeitung, 133 (2008) 4

Miira Tuominen
How Do We Know the Principles? (p.11)

Late Ancient Perspectives to Aristotle.s Theory

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle argues that knowledge (epistêmê) exists. The argument is grounded on the assumption (I 3) that real knowledge is based on demonstration, but that the starting points of demonstrations are known in a non-demonstrated way. Throughout the treatise, he works on the basis of this assumption and returns to it only in the very last chapter (II 19). When the reader, then, arrives at this chapter, her expectations are high: now, perhaps, Aristotle will finally explain how the principles are known. However, the actual discussion Aristotle offers often produces disappointment, even frustration, in the reader.1 At the beginning of the chapter, Aristotle makes some preliminary moves to lay out the questions he will discuss in the remaining 40 lines in the Bekker numbering. His first contribution to the discussion is a rather careless refutation of Plato.s theory of recollection. Content with it, however, he proceeds to claim that the cognitive disposition that knows the principles, develops in us from perception. His account of how this development takes place (100a1-9) is concise and difficult.

Some things, however, are quite clear in Aristotle.s exposition. Firstly, what he offers is an account of how we come to apprehend universal objects. It is the relation between this account and the question of how we come to know the first principles that is problematic. Secondly, on the basis of the examples Aristotle gives, the universals objects he is talking about seem to be very basic general notions such as .human being. and .animal.. At the very end of the chapter Aristotle claims that our intellect (nous) is always true, and we know the principles by the intellectual disposition. This has led some scholars to assume that Aristotle proposes a specific intellectual intuition that concerns the premises of scientific proofs, sometimes understood as definitions.2 The question would then be how this rational insight is related to the capacity to form the very basic universal notions such as "human being" and "animal".

The idea that Aristotle would postulate a form of immediate rational intuition of the first principles seems, at first sight, to be at odds, on the one hand, with what could be called his empiricism and, on the other hand, with the fact that in his own scientific works Aristotle proceeds through dialectical argumentation. From these discrepancies – whether they are real or not – many scholars have concluded that Aristotle does not, in fact, follow his own methodological instructions. I tend to think that the discrepancies in Aristotle's theory have, to some extent, been exaggerated in the scholarly literature. However, I shall not go deeper into this question here.

In this essay, I shall ask how some of the ancient commentators on Aristotle answered the question of how we come to know the principles. I do not claim to explore all possible evidence. Rather, I shall discuss some crucial passages. These passages show that the commentators' explanations of these passages are of utmost importance to us: they provide us with fresh insight into how to understand the question of principles in Aristotle.