Written: 1915

Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1976, Volume 38, pp. 363-372

Publisher: Progress Publishers

First Published: 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XII. Published according to the manuscript

Translated: Clemence Dutt

Edited: Stewart Smith

Original Transcription & Markup: Kevin Goins (2008)

Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

Conspectus of Aristotle’s book “Metaphysics” is contained in a notebook directly following the fragment “On the Question of Dialectics.” The book was published by Schwegler in Greek with a German translation.



Note that this document has undergone special formating to ensure that Lenin’s sidenotes fit on the page, marking as best as possible where they were located in the original manuscript.

See above, quotation about “house.”[1] A mass of extremely interesting, lively,

naïve (fresh) matter which introduces

philosophy and is replaced in the exposi-

tions by scholasticism, by the result without

movement, etc. Clericalism killed what was living in

Aristotle and perpetuated what was dead. “But man and horse, etc., exist as individ-

uals, a universal for itself does not exist

as an individual substance, but only as

a whole composed of a definite concept and

definite matter” (p. 125, Book 7, Chapter

10, 27-28). Ibidem, p. 126, §§ 32-33: ...“Matter is in itself unknowable. Some

matter is sensible and some intelligible;

sensible, such as bronze and wood, in a

word, all movable matter; intelligible, that

which is present in sensible things not

qua sensible, e.g., the objects of mathe- Philosophy is

often divert-

ed by the

definition of

words, etc.

Every-

thing, all

categories are

affected

matics....” Highly characteristic and profoundly in-

teresting (in the beginning of the Meta-

physics) are the polemic with Plato and

the “puzzling” questions, delightful for

their naïveté, and Bedenken[2] regarding

the nonsense of idealism. And all this

along with the most helpless confusion

about the fundamental, the concept and

the particular. NB: At the beginning of The Metaphysics

the stubborn struggle against Her-

aclitus, against his idea of the identity of

Being and not-Being (the Greek philos-

ophers approached close to dialectics but

could not cope with it). Highly character-

istic in general, throughout the whole

book, passim,[3] are the living germs of

dialectics and inquiries about it.... In Aristotle, objective logic is every-

where confused with subjective logic and,

moreover, in such a way that everywhere

objective logic is visible. There is no

doubt as to the objectivity of cognition.

There is a naïve faith in the power of

reason, in the force, power, objective truth

of cognition. And a naïve confusion, a

helplessly pitiful confusion in the dia-

lectics of the universal and the par-

ticular—of the concept and the sensuously

perceptible reality of individual objects,

things, phenomena. Scholasticism and clericalism took what

was dead in Aristotle, but not what was

living; the inquiries, the search-

ings, the labyrinth, in which man lost

his way. Aristotle’s logic is an inquiry, a search-

ing, an approach to the logic of Hegel—

and it, the logic of Aristotle (who every-

where, at every step, raises precisely

the question of dialectics), has been

made into a dead scholasticism by reject-

ing all the searchings, waverings and modes

of framing questions. What the Greeks

had was precisely modes of framing ques-

tions, as it were tentative systems, a naïve

discordance of views, excellently reflected

in Aristotle.

...“Hence it is clear that no universal

exists next to and in separation from its

particulars. The exponents of the Forms are

partly right in their account when they

make the Forms separate; for the Forms

are particular substances, but they are

wrong in considering the one-over-many

as form. The reason for this is that they

cannot explain what are the imperishable

substances of this kind which exist beside

and outside particular sensible substances;

so they make the forms the same in kind as

!

perishable things (for these we know); i.e.,

they make Ideal Man and Ideal Horse, add-

ing the word ‘Ideal’ to the names of sensible

things # (p. 136, Book 7, Ch. 16, § 8-12) # . !

However, I presume that even if we had

never seen the stars, nonetheless there

would be eternal substances besides those

which we knew; and so in the present case

even if we cannot apprehend what they

are, still they must be in existence. It is

clear, then, both that no universal term

is particular substance and that no par-

ticular substance is composed of particular

substances (ούσία)” (— § 13 at the end of

the chapter). Delightful! There are no doubts of the

reality of the external world. The man

gets into a muddle precisely over the

dialectics of the universal and the par-

ticular, of concept and sensation, etc.,

of essence and phenomenon, etc. (P. 146, Book 8—can it have been

inserted afterwards?—Chapter 5, § 2-3). ...“There is a difficulty in the question

(άπορία) how the matter of the individual

is related to the contraries. For example,

if the body is potentially (δυνάμει) healthy,

and the contrary of health is disease, is

not the body potentially both healthy and

diseased?...

NB

...“Further, is not the living man poten-

tially (δυνάμει) dead?” (P. 481), Book 11, Chapter 1, § 12-14: ...“They” (the philosophers) “posit the

objects of mathematics as intermediate be-

tween the Forms and sensible things, as

a third class besides the Forms and the

things of our world. But there is no third

man or horse besides the Ideal one and

the particulars. If on the other hand it is

not as they make out, what sort of ob-

jects are we to suppose to be the concern

of the mathematician? Not surely the things

of our world; for none of these is of the

kind which the mathematical sciences in-

vestigate....”

Ibidem, Chapter 2, § 21-23: ...“Again, is there anything besides the

concrete whole (I mean by this matter

and the material) or not? If not, all things

are perishable, at least everything mate-

rial is perishable; but if there is something,

it must be the form or shape. It is hard

to determine in what cases this is possible

and in what it is not....” Pp. 185-186, Book 11, Chapter 3, § 12—

mathematics sets aside heat, weight and

other “sensible contrarieties,” and has in

mind “only quantity”... “it is the same

with regard to Being.” Here we have the point of view of

dialectical materialism, but accidental-

ly, not consistently, not elaborated, in

passing. Windelband in his sketch of the history

of ancient philosophy (Müller’s Handbuch

der klassisehen Altertums-wissensehaft,

V, I, S. 265) (Reading room of the Bern Li-

brary) stresses that in Aristotle’s logic

(die Logik) “has as its most general pre-

mise the identity of the forms of thought

with those of Being,” and he quotes Metaph-

ysik, V, 7: “δσαχώς λέγεται τοσαχώς

τό εϊναι σημαίνει.” That is § 4. Schwegler

translates it: “Denn so vielfach die Ka-

tegorien ausgesagt werden, so vielfach be-

zeichnen sie em Sein.”[4] A bad translation. An approach to God: Book 12, Chapter 6, § 10-11: ...“For how can there be motion if there

is no actual cause? Wood will not move

itself—carpentry must act upon it; nor

will the menses or the earth move them-

selves—the seeds must act upon the earth,

and the semen on the menses....” Leucippus (idem, § 14) accepts eternal

motion, but he does not explain why

(§ 11). Chapter 7, § 11-19—God (p. 213).

...“Eternal motion must be excited by

something ... eternal” (Chapter 8, § 4)... Book 12, Chapter 10—again a

“re-examination” of the fundamental ques-

tions of philosophy; “interrogation marks,”

so to speak. A very fresh, naïve, doubting

exposition (often hints) of various points

of view. In Book 13 Aristotle again returns

to a criticism of Pythagoras’ theory of

numbers (and Plato’s theory of ideas),

independent of sensible things.

[[ P rimitive idealism: the universal (con-

cept, idea) is a particular being.

This appears wild, monstrously (more accu-

rately, childishly) stupid. But is not

modern idealism, Kant, Hegel, the idea

of God, of the same nature. (absolutely

of the same nature)? Tables, chairs and

the ideas of table and chair; the world

and the idea of the world (God); thing

and “noumen,” the unknowable “Thing-

in-itself”; the connection of the earth and

the sun, nature in general—and law, λόγος,[5]

God. The dichotomy of human knowledge

and the possibility of idealism (= religion)

are given already in the first, elemen-

tary abstraction “house” in general and particular houses







NB



NB

The approach of the (human) mind to

a particular thing, the taking of a copy

(= a concept) of it is not a simple,

immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one

which is complex, split into two, zig-zag-

like, which includes in it the possibility

of the flight of fantasy from life; more

than that: the possibility of the transfor-

mation (moreover, an unnoticeable trans-

formation, of which man is unaware) of

the abstract concept, idea, into a fantasy

(in letzter Instanz[6] = God). For even in

the simplest generalisation, in the most

elementary general idea (“table” in gen-

eral), there is a certain bit of fantasy.

(Vice versa: it would be stupid to deny

the role of fantasy, even in the strictest

science: cf. Pisarev on useful dreaming,

as an impulse to work, and on empty day-

dreaming.)[7] Naïve expression of the “difficulties” of

the “philosophy of mathematics” (to use

modern language): Book 13, Chapter 2, § 23:

...“Further, body is a kind of substance,

since it already in some sense possesses

completeness; but in what sense are lines

substances? They could not be that, neither

as form or shape as, for instance, the soul,

nor as matter, like the body; for it does

not appear that anything can be composed

either of lines or of planes or of points....”

(p. 224) Book 13, Chapter 3 solves these dif-

ficulties excellently, distinctly, clearly,

materialistically (mathematics and other

sciences abstract one of the aspects of

a body, phenomenon, life). But the au-

thor does not consistently maintain this

point of view. Schwegler in his commentary (Vol. IV,

p. 303) says: Aristotle gives here a positive

exposition of “his view of the mathemat-

ical: the mathematical is the abstraction

from the sensuous.” NB

Book 13, Chapter 10 touches on the ques-

tion, which is better expounded by Schweg-

ler in the commentary (in connection with

Metaphysik VII, 13, 5): science is con-

cerned only with the universal (cf. Book 13,

Chapter 10, § 6), but only the particular

is actual (substantial). Does that mean that

there is a gulf between science and real-

ity? Does it mean that Being and thought

are incommensurable? “Is true knowledge

of reality impossible?” (Schwegler, Vol. IV,

p. 338.) Aristotle answers: potentially

knowledge is directed to the universal,

actually it is directed to the particular. Schwegler (ibidem) describes as höchst

beachtenswert[8] F. Fischer’s work: Die

Metaphysik, von empirischem Standpunkte

aus dargestellt [ye ar of publication (18 47)] ,

who speaks of Aristotle’s “realism.” #



NB?

Book 14, Chapter 3, § 7: ...“why is it that

while the mathematical is in no way present

in sensible things, its attributes are pres-

ent in sensible things?”... (p. 254) (The last sentence of the book, Book 14,

Chapter 6, § 21, has the same meaning.)

End of The Metaphysics.



Friedrich Fischer (1801-1853), Professor

of philosophy in Basle. An article about

him by Prantl (Allgemeine Deutsche Bio-

graphie, Vol. 7, p. 67) gives a disparag- #