Studying ancient philosophical works might seem to many students like an antiquated endeavor, akin to reading Euclid’s Elements or Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy when compared to the empirical sciences. However, in philosophy, especially metaphysics, I’ve realized this is not the case. Metaphysics, which inherently involves thinking beyond, yet still accounting for, our empirical realities, reveals secrets to ancient philosophers that we continually rediscover through our own perspectives and experiences. Through a close reading of these ancient texts, one can always find references, however obscure or ambiguous, to ideas we might consider novel in philosophy. As my tutor and friend often argues, while modern philosophy has become more precise and clear in its terminology and descriptions, the ancients are truly the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.
Among those giants is Aristotle, whose works form a significant part of my PhilTeR Master’s program at the University of Lucerne. Of particular interest to my research is his thoughts on questions related to God and being. His Metaphysics has been of utmost importance throughout the ages, not least because of its speculative and complex nature, which shaped philosophical debates throughout the Middle Ages. Compiled at the peak of ancient philosophy, Metaphysics reflects the ideas of Aristotle’s predecessors in speculative philosophy and his conclusions from empirical and philosophical inquiry. Its monumental impact is best appreciated through close study and by tracing its influence on modern Western philosophical thought.
As part of my Master’s research, and aligned with contemporary philosophers such as Enrico Berti, Aryeh Kosman, and Stephen Menn, I am investigating the core objectives of Aristotle’s metaphysics and its true meaning. The central topics—being qua being and the Prime Mover—have been the focus of recent scholarship, alongside structural and textual analyses of the work. In a recent paper, I argued that there has been a historical tendency to equate the Prime Mover with God, which I believe has skewed the interpretation of Metaphysics. Initially, this caused me sleepless nights, as I struggled to reconcile Aristotle with this theistic perspective. The dogmatic lens through which I had viewed him became increasingly problematic. However, after engaging with commentaries and more recent interpretations, I have come to believe that to fully understand Metaphysics, we must let go of medieval interpretations of the Prime Mover.
Furthermore, Aristotle’s other works, such as Physics, On the Heavens, and On the Motion of Animals, offer invaluable insights into his philosophy. For Aristotle, the universe formed a whole, even when studied in parts. My ongoing research will continue to investigate his metaphysics through a naturalistic lens, as opposed to the supernatural interpretations that prevailed during the Middle Ages. This approach is not entirely new, as medieval philosophers like al-Farabī and Averroes shared similar perspectives. However, it opens up fresh possibilities for discovering closer connections between our philosophical thought and that of the ancients.
Karim Ayad
Karim Ayad is currently pursuing a Master's in Philosophy, Theology, and Religions at the University of Lucerne. He graduated from Concordia University in 2006 with a degree in electrical engineering before beginning a career in telecom, financial, and data management industries. His research interests include Aristotle's Prime Mover and the intersection of language, knowledge, and authority.
It’s a shame that so much of Western philosophy followed the lead of Plato instead that of Aristotle. Our demeaning of the body, and of biology in general, has been identified as a major influence leading to our current (and escalating) ecological crisis today.
Plato did advise us to go beyond our bodies. So did Aristotle, actually. But in his Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, Plato gave important roles to our bodies. (Appetites, in the Republic; non-rational species, in the Symposium; and the four elements and their mathematical constituents, in the Timaeus.) He had figured out that you can’t go beyond something without understanding and appreciating it. St Augustine learned this from the Platonists: that the dualistic body-rejecting Manichaeans, of whom he had been one, were mistaken.
Thank you for responding, Robert. But my concern lies with our species’ (since this theme within our “Western philosophy” has apparently gone global) lack of ethical regard (or even ontological appreciation) for the Biosphere, the product of three-and-a-half-billion years of evolution. I humbly admit to much ignorance of ancient Greek and medieval philosophy; would you be able to draw on your knowledge of such to suggest possibilities for applying the thought of Aristotle, Plato, or even St. Augustine, in such a way as to begin to heal the ideological split that has led us to see ourselves as different in kind and valuationally superior to all other life on the planet?
I doubt that we have much disagreement here. We certainly are biological beings, with certain distinctive cognitive developments. I guess what we can learn from that cognitive development is that biology contains the potential to go beyond appetite, stimulus-response, and the like. To try to figure out what’s really good, as Plato pointed out (and Aristotle agreed). Awe and gratitude for all of this are certainly in order.
“…to heal the ideological split that has led us to see ourselves as different in kind and valuationally superior to all other life on the planet?” Different in degree, or different in kind… it’s hard to say where one ends and the other begins. As I said, we can learn from observing ourselves, what surprising things biology seems to be capable of. As for “valuationally superior”–I’m afraid I do place a higher “value” on a human life than on the life of a chicken. But I appreciate that we’re all part of a web of life, of which we humans have limited understanding and to which we owe our existence. So we’d do well to have a lot more respect for the biosphere than we generally seem to have. Awe and gratitude, as you suggest. … My notion of where our current environmental crisis stems from would have less to do with a dualistic dismissal of nature (which as I said, seems to be a feature of Gnostic dualism, rather than of Platonism) than it has to do with the way we’ve designed our economies, with limited-liability companies whose incentives are all to externalize costs onto the commons, the environment, so that other people and later generations will have to pay those costs. This generates amazing productivity, together with amazing irresponsibility.
Ah yes, “the way we’ve designed our economies . . .” Much can be said about this, and I’d like to take our thinking back to the fundamental difference between socially constructed abstractions like the “dollar” and the systems in which it functions versus biological realities like our bodies and those of other living organisms and the physiological and ecological systems underlying their function. We humans have a great deal of choice over the existence and nature of the former, as their creators—but alas, not being the creators of life itself, very little over the latter.
You might want to consider whether “natural versus supernatural” is an appropriate lens through which to understand Aristotle. You’re certainly not the only interpreter to apply these categories to him. But to me, they sound anachronistic. They don’t even seem to apply to modern philosophers such as Descartes, Hegel, or Whitehead. What, exactly, is “nature,” and what is it to be “above nature”? If “nature” is what can be understood via something like present-day physics, for example, then mind, reason, ethics, and aesthetics may well be “supernatural.” But that (hopefully) wouldn’t lead us to banish them from our thinking.
Plato did advise us to go beyond our bodies. So did Aristotle, actually. But in his Republic, Symposium, and Timaeus, Plato gave important roles to our bodies. (Appetites, in the Republic; non-rational species, in the Symposium; and the four elements and their mathematical constituents, in the Timaeus.) He had figured out that you can’t go beyond something without understanding and appreciating it. St Augustine learned this from the Platonists: that the dualistic body-rejecting Manichaeans, of whom he had been one, were mistaken.
Sorry, I must have missed your Dec. 18 comment. But I don’t generally think in terms of “natural vs supernatural” (anachronistic? Perhaps so). I do think in terms of biology, and I see us humans as biological beings, having a vast amount of commonality with other lifeforms and then considerable cognitive development that certain other species share but to a lesser degree. No, I would not recommend banishing mind, reason, ethics or aesthetics or demeaning them in any way; rather, I would urge that we apply our cognitive talents to re-cognizing Life on Earth so as to grasp our comprehensive kinship, and to approach it, in all its many forms, in awe and gratitude.
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