Introduction

Aristotle’s Metaphysics opens with a statement about human nature: «Πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει» — “all men by nature desire to know” (Metaphysics A.1, 980a21). The proof adduced is the pleasure of the senses, especially of sight, which is loved for itself and not only for its usefulness. On that basis a complete theory of the degrees of knowledge and of its sciences is built.

1. The natural desire and wonder

The desire to know is natural: it does not proceed from deliberation, but from human nature itself, and is common to all. It should be distinguished from the mere accumulation of information, for what is sought is the why — the cause — not the isolated datum.

The affective origin of philosophy is wonder (τὸ θαυμάζειν): “men began to philosophize because of wonder” (Metaphysics A.2, 982b12), and they did so “to escape ignorance” and without any practical aim, for the sake of knowledge itself. It should be noted, however, that wonder is a deficiency that is resolved: it is the initial engine that dies out once knowledge is attained, not a permanent state.

2. The degrees of knowing

Aristotle orders the degrees of knowledge in an ascending ladder (Metaphysics A.1, 980a21–981b10): sensation (αἴσθησις), memory (μνήμη), experience (ἐμπειρία), art (τέχνη), science (ἐπιστήμη) and wisdom (σοφία).

The crucial distinction is the one separating experience from art and science. Experience knows the individual and knows that the thing is so (ὅτι); art and science know the universal and the cause, that is, the why (διότι). Hence “men of experience know that the thing is so, but not why” (981a28–30), and “those who have art can teach, those who have mere experience cannot” (981b7–10): transmissible knowledge is the one that grasps the universal. At the summit lies wisdom (σοφία), knowledge of the first principles and causes (982a1–3), which is sought not for its usefulness but for itself.

3. The division of the sciences

In Metaphysics E.1 (1025b–1026a) Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: the theoretical (θεωρητικαί: physics, mathematics, theology), the practical (πρακτικαί: ethics, politics) and the productive (ποιητικαί: poetics, crafts). Among the theoretical ones the supreme is theology or first philosophy — “the most divine and honorable” — because it studies being qua being and the first causes. There is thus an objective hierarchy of knowledge: the theoretical sciences are worth more than the practical and productive ones because they are ordered to knowledge itself, not to an external utility.

4. Wisdom, contemplation and happiness

Wisdom is composed of understanding (νοῦς, the apprehension of principles) and science (ἐπιστήμη, demonstration): Nicomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141a–b. Contemplation (θεωρία) is the activity of the intellect in possession of its object: the supreme degree of human actualization. That is why the contemplative life (βίος θεωρητικός) is supreme happiness (Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8, 1177a–1178b): the activity of the intellect is the most continuous, the most self-sufficient, the most loved for itself. The term and model of that contemplation is the god as “thought thinking itself” (νόησις νοήσεως, Metaphysics Λ.9, 1074b34), which moves “as the beloved” (Λ.7, 1072b3).

An internal tension should nevertheless be recorded. Aristotle states that all men desire to know by nature, but also that the contemplative life is “too high for man”: “he will live thus not insofar as he is a man, but insofar as there is something divine in him” (Nicomachean Ethics X.7, 1177b26–28). The desire is universal; its full fulfillment is not. That tension between the desire — universal — and its term — contemplation, reserved for few — is one of the most fruitful fissures of his thought.

Conclusion

It can be safely asserted that Aristotle grounds knowing in a natural desire, orders it in an ascending ladder that culminates in wisdom, and identifies it at its highest degree with contemplation, which is happiness. It should not be asserted that the desire to know is “curiosity” in the modern sense of indefinite restlessness: it is a teleological desire tending toward a term. The side of the seeking understood as the examination of one’s own life, distinct from the Aristotelian one, is treated in Socrates and Plato: the examined life and the desire for truth.

References

Primary sources

  • Aristotle, Metaphysica A.1–2, E.1, Λ.7 and Λ.9 (Bekker ed.); Ethica Nicomachea VI.7 and X.7–8; De anima III.

Secondary sources

  • Augros, M., “The Opening Line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics”.
  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Aristotle’s Metaphysics”.