An Argument for Divine

Omniscience in Aristotle
Rolf George

I Background
The object of this paper is to call attention to a reading of the last sen-
tence of Metaph XII 4 first offered by Brentano in his Psychologie des
Aristoteles,1 and to some variants of it. The sentence seemed to Bren-
tano, and indeed is, crucial for a problem in Aristotle's theology which
is no less important for being such an old chestnut namely - what,
if anything, does Aristotle's God know about the world?
Broadly speaking, three positions have been taken on this issue:2
Thomas Aquinas and many others, Brentano among them, held that
Aristotle conceived of God as a creator who providentially cares for
his creation. This divine activity implies nomological and historical
knowledge of the world, a knowledge not only of forms and laws, but
also of individual substances and their temporal states.
By contrast, Averoes had maintained that Aristotle's God has only
nomological knowledge of the world, that he knows only the laws and
forms of things, not individuals or their states.3

1 Franz Brentano, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles (Mainz 1867, repr. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1967) 189f. He restates his interpretation
several times in later writings; cf. especially Über Aristoteles, ed. Rolf George
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner 1986) 332-51. [See review article by Joseph A. Novak,
APEIRON 20 (1987) (Eds.)]
2 For a brief history of the problem containing long lists of thinkers on all sides
of the issue, see Konrad Eiser, Die Lehre des Aristoteles über das Wirken Gottes
(Münster 1893) 19-30. Cf. Brentano, Über Aristoteles, 223.
3 For this St. Thomas attacked him as being 'nan tarn penpateticus quam paripateti-
cae philosophiae depravator.' Opusculum 15: 'De umtäte mtellectus contra Averroistas
Pansienses', Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula Omnia, ed. R.P. Perrier (Paris 1949) 70.

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62 Rolf George

The still most common view, finally, is that Aristotle's God con-
templates the most perfect thing there is, which is Himself, and noth-
ing else. He therefore knows nothing of the world, perhaps not even
that it exists. Brentano thought that this line of interpretation began
with Peter Ramus, in the context of his anti-Aristotelian polemics, and
was meant to illustrate the absurdity of Aristotle's thought, though
it is, in fact, much older (cf. MM II15,1212b3 ff.). The tradition, without
its negative connotation, was renewed by Jules Simon,4 and was adopt-
ed by the mainstream of Aristotle exegesis: Schwegler, Bonitz, Zeller,
and later Gomperz, Ross, Cherniss, Cornford, Guthrie, Oehler,5 and
many others. Brentano seems to have thought this position to be a kind
of establishment conspiracy, an attitude he sometimes assumed when
others disagreed with him. He attacked it in a rancorous controversy
with Zeller.
The chief apparent support for the Ramist position is the seventh
and ninth chapters of Metaph XII. Only here does the position appear
to be systematically argued, with only one other concurring text, in
the Eudemian Ethics: '[God] is too perfect to think of anything besides
Himself (1245b 16-18). There is, on the other hand, an embarrassing-
ly large number of passages inconsistent with this interpretation; they
occur in different contexts and are impossible to refute with summary
argument. Traditionally they have been ignored, or dealt with ad hoc.
To illustrate: Metaph I 2 (982a20-3alO) states in plain words that God
has knowledge of first principles and causes of all things, saying that
such a science 'either God alone can have, or God above all others.'
Ross explains that Aristotle does not here give his own opinion, but
speaks of 'God as commonly conceived.'6 Again, when in Metaph III

4 Jules Simon, Etudes sur la Theodicee de Platan et d'Aristote (Paris 1840)

5 The present paper is meant to provide, indirectly, a rejoinder to Oehler's sub-
tle and extended exegesis of XII 9: Klaus Oehler, 'Aristotle on Self-Knowing/
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118 (1974) 493-506.
6 W.D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1924) I,
123. Cf. Oehler, 502. The point goes back to Bonitz, Index Anstotelicus, 203,
where it is claimed that δοκεΐ είναι introduces what depends 'ab hominis
alicuius opinione, non ex ipsa rei natura'; and Opponitur veritate re:'. Closer inspec-
tion shows that δοκεΐ είναι does not qualify the crucial part of the sentence·
'God is thought to be [δοκεί είναι] among the causes of all things and to be a
principle, and [second] such a science either God alone can have, or God
above all others.' Even if the words mean what Bonitz says they do, which is
very doubtful, they do not qualify the second sentence.

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Anstotle 63

4 (1000b4) Aristotle argues against Empedocles' conception of a good

who knows no strife and is therefore 'less wise than the others/ his
argument is dismissed as disingenuous, coming, as it supposedly does,
'from one whose God knows only himself/7 the point at issue thus
being taken for granted. And so it goes; the list can be considerably
extended.
But, more importantly, the support which the Ramist tradition der-
ives from XII 7 & 9 is only apparent. Some years ago Richard Norman
gave these chapters a compelling reading compatible with the Aver-
roist line.8 He pointed out that 'Aristotle uses the phrase "mind think-
ing itself" as a regular way of describing pure abstract thought.'9 He
continued:
When Aristotle describes the Prime Mover as "thinking itself", he is
not referring to any activity that could be called "self-contemplation";
he is simply describing the same activity that humans perform when
they engage in abstract thought. (67)
When engaged in this thought the mind, human or divine, thinks it-
self in the sense that is IS the νοητά which it thinks. The phrase as-
serts, not self contemplation, 'but simply the identity of νους and
νοητόν that characterises all abstract thought.'10
This interpretation is consistent not only with the two passages men-
tioned earlier, which the Ramist tradition had to explain away, but also
with Nicomachean Ethics X, where the summum bonum of human life
is said to be contemplation identified as divine activity: To suppose
that in making this the ideal Aristotle is urging men to rapturous self-
admiration is as false as it is ludicrous' (72).
Divine thought, in contrast to human abstract thought, is of eter-
nal duration: 'God is always in that good state in which we sometimes
are' (1072b23). But it is also of enormously greater extent: 'Knowing

7 Harold Cherniss, Aristotle on the Presocratics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity Press 1935), 232. Cf. also Oehler 502.
8 Richard Norman, 'Aristotle's Philosopher God,' Phronesis 14 (1969) 63-74
9 Ibid, 66. Norman substantiates his point by drawing on de An III 4, whose
connection with Metaph XII 7 & 9 has often been noted.
10 Ibid, 69. For a concise and clear explanation of the sense of this identity, see
G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T. Geach, Three Philosophers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press 1961), 59 f.

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64 Rolf George

all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal
knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under
the universal ... Such a science God alone can have, or God above all
others' (982a22 ... 983a9). This can be put, in the language of Metaph
XII, by saying that God is all things, and this is the reading Brentano
gives to the last sentence of XII 4.

II The Text

Toward the end of Metaph XII 4 Aristotle argues that there are three
elements of things: form, privation and matter, and four causes: form,
privation, matter and moving cause. Because of the principle of syn-
onymy — 'Each substance comes into being out of something that
shares its name' (1070a5) - the moving cause contains the form (or
its contrary), so that the following holds:
Since the moving cause in the case of natural things is — for man,
for instance, man, and in the products of thought the form or its con-
trary, there will be in a sense three causes, while in a sense there are
four. For the medical art is in a sense health, and the building art is
the form of the house, and man begets man. (1070b30-4)
Then follows the sentence we are concerned with to conclude the
chapter:

έτι παρά ταύτα ως το πρώτον πάντων κινούν πάντα.

This is the version found in all mss.. Bonitz, in his 1849 edition, trans-
posed ως and το, which was accepted by almost all later editors. He
argues that Aristotle wants to add a further principle to those already
mentioned.11 But this reasoning, surely, goes beyond mere philology.
Recall the context: Aristotle had presented us with two enumerations:
there is an inventory of causes, and a list of cases where moving and
formal principle coincide. This can be represented as follows:

11 'Sribendum profecto est το ως πρώτον. Addit enim ad census antea expositas causam
moventem.' H. Bonitz, Anstotelis Metaphysica, Commentarius (Bonn 1849), 483.

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Aristotle 65

There will be in a sense three causes, while in a sense there are four

[1. form
2. moving cause (or form cum moving cause)
3. nrivation
privation
4. matter]

For

a. the medical art is in a sense health, and

b. the building art is the form of the house and
c. man begets man.

It seemed obvious to Bonitz that παρά ταύτα, Tjesides these', is meant

to continue the (numbered) inventory of causes: besides these four (or
three) causes there is yet another, namely the first mover. If this reason-
ing is accepted, the usual sense results:

5. Besides these [several causes] there is that which

as first of all things moves all things.

But, pace Bonitz and later commentators, it is more likely that the παρά
ταΰτα continues the (lettered) list of cases. If πρώτον πάντων κινούν
is taken as the subject, and if the omitted εστίν functions as the verb,
then the sentence becomes, according to Brentano:

d1. Besides these, [i.e., besides medical art being health, etc.], there
is the way in which that which is the first moving principle
among all is all things.12

This interpretation differs from the received version in two ways: it

revises the sentence itself, as suggested, and it also changes the refer-
ence of ταΰτα. The first of these revisions demands the second, but
the second does not require the first. Thus one can accept the word-
ing of the received version, but understand it as a continuation of the
list of cases. (5) now becomes d2:

12 Psychologie, 190: '... hiezu kommt noch die Weise, in welcher das, was unter
allen das erste bewegende Princip ist, Alles ist.'

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66 Rolf George

d2. Besides these, [i.e., besides medical art, building art and man]
there is that which as first of all things moves all things.

Yet another reading results from taking back Bonitz's change:

d3. Besides these, [i.e., besides medical art being health, the build-
ing art being the house and man begetting man] there is the
way in which the first of all things moves all things.
I suggest that both d2 and d3 imply, even if they do not explicitly
state, that the first of all things contains within itself the formal princi-
ple of what it brings forth, as do medical art, architecture, and man.
The first mover moves all things. Therefore, in analogy to the first three
cases it IS all things in the sense of d1. The crucial departure from the
received understanding is thus not the reversal of Bonitz's emenda-
tion, nor even the adoption of Brentano's translation, but the restruc-
turing of the paragraph, namely, the changing of the reference of
ταΰτα. Since the three suggested revisions are in effect equivalent and
support the Averroist thesis, I shall not specifically argue for any one
of them.13 And since they equally support Brentano's conclusions, I
shall summarily, if not quite accurately, refer to them as 'Brentano's
interpretation'.
Brentano's interpretation advances a bolder hypothesis, a hypothe-
sis of greater content, than the received understanding, which merely
asserts a tenet of every known version of Aristotelian theology, namely,
that there is a first mover. It avers, in addition, that in the first mover
formal and moving principle coincide, and that, as a consequence, God
has knowledge of the world, at least in the sense of nomological
knowledge.

Ill Discussion

1. A first point in favour of Brentano's interpretation is that the im-

mediate context becomes more coherent. Some commentators have
noted the discontinuity of the last sentence (in the received version)

13 My colleague Robert Fowler suggests that Brentano's version is the least likely
of the three, since it divorces κινούν from πάντα, and since the copula, as
Brentano translates it, carries a lot of weight and would probably not have
been omitted.

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Aristotle 67

with the rest of the chapter. Leo Elders thinks that it is to introduce
'the theme of the next chapter.'14 But the first mover is not the theme
of the next chapter, and, in any case, dropping an unrelated teaser
at the end of a sustained argument is a stylistic flourish one would
not expect here.15 Others have thought that the last sentence is a later
addition which is really out of place.16 This is perfectly reasonable, and
almost inevitable, if one takes the sentence to continue the inventory
of causes. Our way of looking at the passage, by contrast, establishes
a smooth continuous text. To appreciate this, the reader is advised at
this point slowly to reread the end of Ch. 4, omitting the customary
paragraphing that separates the last sentence from the rest.
2. But we are not out of the woods. It is, unfortunately, possible
(because it has been done) to take the last sentence as a continuation
of the list of cases, and at the same time construe it as maintaining
a disanalogy with the other cases, παρά ταύτα is then read as, perhaps,
'apart from these', or 'in contrast to these', or the like:

d4. In contrast to these [i.e., medical art's being health, etc.] stands
the way in which the first of all things moves all things.

Something like this must have been the reading that underlies the com-
mentary of Alexander Aphrodisias which has been preserved by
Averroes.17

14 Leo Elders, Aristotle's Theology (Assen: Van Gorcum 1972), 122

15 It is suitable to the genre of detective fiction, and is often employed there. Cf.
for example Edgar Wallace, Room 13 (London: John Long 1967), end of the se-
cond chapter: Ί don't bear him any ill will. It would be absurd if I did. Only,
Peter, before she marries I want to say - ' 'Before she marries?' Peter Kane's
voice shook. 'John, didn't Barney tell you? She was married this morning.'
(The chapter ends here. Ch. 4 starts:) 'Married?' Johnny repeated the word
dully ...' (22 f.).
16 Pierre Aubenque, Le problems de I'etre chez Aristote (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France 1977), 398. The reference is from Elders, loc. cit.
17 Jacob Freudenthal, ed.: Die durch Averroes erhaltenen Fragmente Alexanders zur
Metaphysik des Aristoteles, Abhandlungen der Kgl. Preuss. Akademie der Wis-
senschaften, Berlin 1884. Independently published, Berlin 1885. Brentano drew
attention to this text: ber Aristoteles, 341, though the argument that follows is
my own, except where indicated. It does, however, owe much to Brentano's
discussion.

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68 Rolf George

According to Averroes
Alexander says that he [Aristotle] wanted to teach with these words,
[i.e., with the last sentence of XII 4] that there is another principle
outside the moved things which is common for all movers; this prin-
ciple, insofar as it is common, need not necessarily to be viewed, since
it is common and remote, as synonymous.

That is, the disanalogy with the other cases on the list is located spe-
cifically in the presumed fact that God moves the world non-
synonymously: Alexander tells us that unlike medical art, the first mover
does not contain within himself the formal principle of his creation.
This, of course, makes the last sentence compatible with the Ramist
interpretation: our conclusions concerning the manner in which the
first mover moves, and what he knows, were based entirely on the
analogy between the other cases on the list. If this is negated, no specific
claim concerning the first mover follows.
Averroes quotes Alexander as supporting his contention in this way:
He [Alexander] says: What is doubtful about the earlier proposition
that the synonymous is generated from the synonymous is that there
is nothing in the lash of what it causes on the body of the person
beaten with it, and similarly one cannot say that the form of the cut
and the division is in the saw that produces it in the wood. This,
however, is the case because such things are tools for moving causes,
while his1· assertion holds only for moving principles. Therefore he
[Alexander] says that the division which is caused by the saw is in
the soul of the sawyer, and that the blow which is caused by the lash
is in the soul of the person using it. Therefore, he [Alexander] says
that the truth of this proposition [of the generation of the synony-
mous from the synonymous] depends on three conditions, namely,
that it occurs in the agent, not in the tool, in the near and not in the
remote, and in that which acts essentially and not accidentally (96 f.).

Now this, with all respect, doesn't have much going for it. Syn-
onymy, Alexander says, is not preserved in tools, or when a principle
is common to several effects, or when it acts remotely, i.e., through
intermediaries.

18 Freudenthal interpolates 'Alexander's', but shouldn't it be 'Aristotle's'?

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Anstotle 69

To begin with, it is unclear what is meant by remoteness. As Bren-

tano points out, what is earlier in the order of purposes is later in the
order of execution (Über Aristoteles 344). If there are, as in many arts,
intermediaries in the order of execution, the initial mover acts, in this
sense, remotely. But this does not imply that he does not contain the
formal principle of the product. Quite the contrary: only the architect,
who is the remote cause in the order of execution, knows the plan of
the entire house, whereas from the viewpoint of the workers the colour
of the shingles, the size of the windows, the pitch of the roof are ac-
cidental. Indeed, If they do not understand the larger purpose, and
each only carries out his own instructions, the whole structure seems
to come about by accident. What is true of the workers holds even more
of their tools: In the order of execution, the causes closer to the product
contain less, and eventually none, of the letter's form. Alexander makes
a special exception for tools because he mistakenly thinks that the cause
closest to the product, except for the tool, is the repository of the form.
But the opposite is obviously the case. In natural becoming, too, the
remote cause does not contain any less of the form than the more im-
mediate: there is as much humanity in the grandfather as there is in
the father (cf. Über Aristoteles 344).
There remains the claim that a principle which is common to several
effects need not be viewed as synonymous with them 'since it is com-
mon.' But whether an agent has brought about one thing or many de-
pends on one's point of view. For, in designing the house the architect
also designs its roof, its doors and windows, and, if he is painstaking,
doorknobs, hinges, etc. To think otherwise is to commit the very
paradigm of a category mistake. From the viewpoint of the workers
the architect has designed a plurality of things, but from his own he
has produced chiefly one thing with many coordinated parts.
Aristotle makes a related point about the entire world when he says
that 'All things are ordered together' (XII 10, 1075al6). This sentence
from XII10 immediately follows the metaphor of the general on whom
the battle order of the army depends. He, like the architect, has the
order in his mind, and in designing one thing has designed many. He
imparts the order through intermediaries who may or may not grasp
the import of what they are doing. (As a rule, soldiers don't; they mere-
ly hope that somebody knows what they are doing. They see many
things going on, not one.) In sum, remoteness does not tell against
synonymy, and unity of effect is a viewpointish thing.
3. This said, it is worth pointing out that the distinctions just discus-
sed were not introduced by Aristotle, but by Alexander, and were, quite

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70 Rolf George

possibly, invented merely to support the divine ignorance thesis while

at the same time reading our sentence as continuing the list of cases.
But even if we cede some plausibility to Alexander's tortured argu-
ment, he is summarily refuted by another text, which, in addition, dis-
proves the received version and, indeed, puts Brentano's interpretation
past doubt.
In Metaph XII 10 Aristotle says:
Anaxagoras makes the good a motive principle; for his νους moves
things. But it moves them for an end, which must be something other
than it, except according to our way of stating the case; for, on our
view, the medical art is in a sense health.19
Elser comments:
Anaxagoras' νους is a moving cause in as far as it caused the original
motion of the whirl, but it is not a final cause, yet, it moves for some
purpose which is other than itself, viz. in view of a certain order in
the world. If so, this purpose will be the absolute origin of movement,
and νους is no longer the first being. - It is only in Aristotle's own
system that this duality is avoided. (281)
But Elser does not note the connection of this passage with the end
of XII 4, which is so obvious: Aristotle takes the view here under dis-
cussion to be untenable unless in the first mover formal and moving
principle are identical. This is not merely stated, but proposed on the
basis of the analogy with medical art, the very analogy Alexander de-
nies. That is, we must suppose that as medical art is to health, so is
the first mover to the world. And this is the same message as that of
the last sentence of XII 4, in Brentano's interpretation. Aristotle thus
asserts analogy, rather than disanalogy, between the first mover and
the other cases on the list.
The reference to 'medical art' in XII10 defies explanation if the con-
nection between the two passages is not noted. Joseph Owens has
remarked about it that 'no further explanation is given of this cryptic
statement.'20 If seen in the proper context, its level of obscurity is not
excessive for Aristotle.

19 1075b8. Brentano repeatedly emphasized the connection between the two pas-
sages, e.g., in Aristotle and His World View, tr. Rolf George and Roderick M
Chisholm (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1978), 58.
20 Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies 1963), 453

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Anstotle 71

Thus the evidence, both textual and systematic, speaks against Alex-
ander's conjecture. What remains is that he assumed the very same
nexus of sentences as Brentano's interpretation.
4. If there remains any inclination to adopt either the received ver-
sion or Alexander's conjecture, it might be dispelled by a reflection on
the larger context of our passage. This context makes it overwhelm-
ingly likely that Aristotle meant to assert an analogy. If we attend less
to the substance of chapters four and five than to the logic employed,
we note that analogies are here used or discussed in several other pas-
sages as well; indeed, the two chapters appear to contain Aristotle's
most developed and sophisticated use of that figure of argument. They
mark a demonstrable departure from other (perhaps earlier) texts, such
as de Part An. A discussion of this is worth a short digression.
An analogy, in Aristotle and elsewhere, is a claim of the form 'as
a is to b, so c is to d'. In de Part An this is put to use as follows:

We have, then, first to describe the common function, common that

is, to the whole animal kingdom, or to certain large groups, or to the
members of a species. ... In the first case the common attributes may
be called analogous, in the second generic, in the third specific. (645b
20 ff.)

By drawing analogies, e.g., between the bone of man and the spine
of fish (644bl2) and by such claims as, for instance, that 'what in the
bird is feather, in the fish is scale' (644a22) etc., Aristotle identifies
properties, like 'feather-or-scale', 'bone-or-spine' that span several
genera. This frees him from the confining demand of the Postenor Ana-
lytics that 'a single science is one whose domain is a single genus'
(87a37). The only reason given for this employment of analogy is econ-
omy of exposition (645blO): statements covering several genera at once
can now be made, and 'groups not popularly known by a common
appellation' (645b5), e.g., the union of birds, fishes and mammals, can
be treated in one science. Note, though, that all such groups are sets
we would designate by notations such as 'χ:ΐχ'; they are sets which
are identified by mondadic, if complex, predicates, unions of genera.
This will not do if the science to be transacted concerns causes and
principles, essentially relational attributes of things. For this purpose
one needs some manner of identifying what we now call domains of
relations, i.e., a way of delineating sets like x: (3y)Rxy. Consider now
what Aristotle says in Metaph XII 5, and mark the difference from the
preceding:

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72 Rolf George

While man is the originative principle of man universally, there is no

universal man, but Peleus is the originative principle of Achilles, and
your father of you, and this particular B of this particular BA, though
B in general is the originative principle of BA taken without qualifi-
cation. (1071a 20)

'B in general' is the domain of a relation, where the B's are άρχαι of
the BA's. The last clause gives the recipe for constructing the domains
of specific relations, e.g., man as the originative principle of man, which
is the set of fathers, i.e., the domain of the relation 'is the father of.
It is possible that Aristotle meant to restrict his generalisation to the
context of causes and principles, the theme of these chapters. But
another text suggests that he meant to be quite general: in Metaph V
6 he says '[Those things have] unity by analogy which have the same
relation as something else to some other thing' (1016b34). The relations
are here not restricted to causation and the like, and it would follow
that the intended point was, quite generally, that if a is to b as c is to
d, then the set (a, c ] is the domain of the relation that underlies the
analogy. It is, however, of no consequence for our argument whether
Aristotle meant to be this general, and I shall not pursue the matter.
Without use of analogy, de Part An, according to Aristotle himself,
would have become a bigger and more repetitious book. But it could,
presumably, still state precisely the same facts, if less economically.
By contrast, the use of analogy is essential when it comes to picking
out such sets as fathers, causes, and the like. The concern is here not,
or not exclusively, with achieving breadth, that is with finding a device
that allows the formation of useful unions of natural kinds, but with
identifying the domain of any relation, even if, as we should now say,
it is defined on a single species, as fatherhood is defined on the species
of humans. This is a distinctly different use of analogy, occurring, it
seems, only in Metaph XII 4&5.
We must be careful not to read too much modern relational theory
into these texts. To identify the domain of R, if it is conceived in the
modern way as x: (3y)Rxy, one must be able to articulate R. But con-
sider what might be called an analogical progression, for example, 'as
1 is to 2, so is 3 to 4, 5 to 6, 7 to 8, etc.' If one sees how to continue
this progression, one can identify the 'domain', i.e., the set of left ele-
ments, as the set of odd numbers, even without being able to articu-
late the underlying relation (the binary relation 'is succeeded by a
number divisible by two'). One can, in other words, understand a
progression and identify the domain without turning one's mind to

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 An Argument for Divine Omniscience in Aristotle 73

the underlying relation, or raising the question whether there is such

a thing. The progression itself allows one to 'collect' the domain.
Our passage is surrounded by texts that invoke the concept of anal-
ogy, specifically unity by analogy, i.e., the formation of domains of
relations, at least eight times. In each case an analogical progression
could be constructed, and in one case it explicitly is: 'As Peleus is to
Achilles ...' etc., as quoted above. It is this context which alerts us to
the fact that the list of cases' plainly implies such a progression, name-
ly, that as medical art is to health, so is the building art to the house,
and man to this child. The passage collects, by using stock examples,
the domain of a certain relation, that between moving causes and the
formal principles that dwell in them. In Brentano's interpretation the
progression continues to include the last sentence, which completes
the list of cases.
We are thus led to believe that Aristotle meant to say not merely
that in God moving and formal principle coincide, but that they do
so just as in medical art, etc.: that as medical art is to health, architec-
ture to the house, and man to his child, so is God to the universe.
This has already been confirmed by the Anaxagoras passage in Metaph
XII10. One might even suggest that Aristotle introduced the claim that
moving and formal principle are in a sense the same not just to make
a nice point about causation, interesting though it may be in itself.
Perhaps this claim was advanced specifically in view of the last sen-
tence, in which the progression culminates.
5. Finally, an advocate of Brentano's interpretation can derive some
slight additional comfort, if he still needs it, from a passage in Cicero's
de Natura Deorum where Velleius, voicing his Epicurean reservations
about Aristotle says that 'modo ... mentem tnbuit omnem divinitatem, modo
mundum ipsum deum dicit esse ...' (I 33). This is generally thought (δοκεϊ
είναι in the sense of Bonitz, see above, note 6) to belong to the lost
de Philosophia; but could it not be a distorted echo of the view here ad-
vanced? After all, in a sense, if God is the world, then the world is God.
6. In the end, however, our case must rest on the overall consistency
of the interpretation with Aristotle's teaching, and Brentano himself
always took this larger view. We saw that it fits with what was said
about the divine science in Metaph I 2, and that it is in closest agree-
ment with the reading of Metaph XII 7 & 9 which Norman has provid-
ed. God is all things in that he knows all things. The νοητά which he
is are the genera and laws of all things. But, as the wise man, he has
no knowledge of all things 'in detail' (Metaph I 2, 982alO). The law of
synonymy is thus universally preserved: the mind of the first moving

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74 Rolf George

cause contains the form of the product just as subordinate moving

causes contain the forms of their effects, and in the world as a whole,
actuality precedes potentiality.21 As Aristotle puts it in de Anima II 5:

Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, poten-

tial knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe
as a whole it is not prior even in time. (430a20).22

Department of Philosophy
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON
N2L 3G1
rgeorge @ watdcs. UWaterloo. ca

21 Cf. Brentano, ber Aristoteles, 275, 325, 350ff., 381.

22 I discussed these matters many years ago with Gisela Striker, and later in one
of the sessions of the Cambridge ancient philosophy seminar with G.E.M. An-
scombe and G.E.L. Owen. I gratefully acknowledge their criticisms and sug-
gestions. Special thanks are due to a colleague from the Classics Department
at Waterloo, Robert Fowler, whose sure sense of the Greek idiom has saved
me from a couple of mistakes, in particular an identification of ως with ούτως,
which had led me to the translation 'just so [i.e., just as architecture, medical
art and man] does the first of all things move all things.' Fowler thinks that
the former would not be a demonstrative adverb in Aristotle, though it is
sometimes so used in other sources.

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