Aristotle on Metaphysics(2004) - Bibotu.com

ARISTOTLE’S METHOD IN METAPHYSICS 77(995 a 29–31)So again he emphasizes that we may fail to recognize an aporia. But whathe means by this is surely not that we may fail to be sufficiently thoroughin our review of the reputable opinions of our predecessors. What he meansis rather that an aporia may entirely escape notice and may need to berecognized and discovered for the first time. This is also suggested by thewords: ‘the aporia in our thought indicates this [i.e. a knot, an aporia] inthe object’.What this suggests is that, rather than thinking that it is simplyopinions held by earlier thinkers that are the source of the individualmetaphysical aporiai, <strong>Aristotle</strong> thinks that the things themselves are thesource of the aporiai. So the subject under investigation is itself genuinelypuzzling, and this is why we, if we are sufficiently sensitive, will bepuzzled. If this interpretation is correct, it follows that the aporia-basedmethod is not a variation of an endoxic method. It is true that <strong>Aristotle</strong> isvery much interested in the opinions of his predecessors about the natureof being, and especially in conflicts among such opinions. But he does notthink that such opinions and their conflicts, as such and by themselves,give rise to aporiai. What he thinks is rather that the familiarity andengagement with the conflicts of opinions of one’s predecessors helps toimprove one’s sensibility to the aporiai generated by the things themselves.This reading is also confirmed when he says earlier that his predecessorswere guided by the things themselves in their searches (see 984 a 16–19 andb 8–11, quoted at the end of Chapter 2).There is also an important advantage of this upshot, i.e. the upshot thatthe aporia-based method is not a variation of an endoxic method. For it isdifficult to see how a search that is based on reputable opinions (endoxa)can at the same time, i.e. to the very extent that it is simply based onreputable opinions, be a search for objective knowledge or, as <strong>Aristotle</strong>says, a search for ‘the truth’ (see 998 a 20–21). Surely, to the extent that asearch is based simply on reputable opinions, it can only result in yetfurther reputable opinions—rather than simply in knowledge of the truth.So, if <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s method in metaphysics is based in reputable opinions,either it cannot amount to a search for knowledge of the truth, or it can doso only if he provides a general argument of the following form:ultimately, it is reputable opinions that constitute knowledge of the truth.But it is hard to find such an argument in <strong>Aristotle</strong>. (For an alternativeinterpretation, which argues that in general <strong>Aristotle</strong>’s method is endoxic,see especially Nussbaum 1982.)