Howard,
You asked: Did Peirce himself compare or contrast his Firstness with
Aristotle's Essences?
I don't know of any place where he does this explicitly, but perhaps
someone else on one of these lists does. Meanwhile, you might find this
passage (that Peirce wrote for Baldwin's Dictionary) of interest
(Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, The Macmillan Co., New
York, vol. 2, pp. 50-55 (1902):
CP. 6.353. *Matter and Form*
The word matter (Lat. materia, which was used to translate the Gr. {hylé})
is often employed where the more appropriate Greek word would be {söma}
corpus, body; or {to hypokeimenon}, subjectum, or even {hé hypostasis},
translated person in theology. Form (Lat. forma, used to translate the Gr.
{morphé} and {eidos}, though the latter is more exactly represented by
species) is often employed where {schéma} figure, or {typos}, shape, would
be near equivalents. The Greek expressions {morphé, paradeigma, eidos,
idea, to ti esti, to ti en einai} are pretty nearly synonymous.
354. The distinction of matter and form was first made, apparently, by
Aristotle. It almost involves his metaphysical doctrine; and as long as his
reign lasted it was dominant. Afterwards it was in disfavour; but Kant
applied the terms, as he did many others drawn from the same source, to an
analogous but widely different distinction. In many special phrases the
Aristotelian and Kantian senses almost coalesce, in] others they are quite
disconnected. It will, therefore, be convenient to consider: (1) the
Aristotelian distinction; (2) the Kantian distinction; and (3) special
applications.* [I have quoted only *The Aristotelian distinction*. GR]*
355. *The Aristotelian distinction*. Not only was the distinction
originated by Aristotle, but one of the two conceptions, that of matter, is
largely due to him. Indeed, it is perhaps true that the Greek word for
matter in the sense of material, {hylé}, was never understood in that
general sense before Aristotle came to Athens. For the first unquestionable
cases of that meaning occur in certain dialogues of Plato, concerning which
-- though there are no dates that are not open to dispute -- it seems to
the present writer that it is as certain as any such fact in the history of
Greek philosophy that the earliest of them was written about the time of
Aristotle's arrival. It is true that, as Aristotle himself says, matter was
the earliest philosophical conception. For the first Ionian philosophers
directed their thoughts to the question what the world was made of. But the
extreme vagueness of the notion with them is shown by their calling it {he
arché} the beginning, by the nonsense of the question, and by many more
special symptoms. If the philosophical conception of matter distinguished
the metaphysics of Aristotle that of Plato had been no less marked by its
extraordinary development of the notion of form, to which the mixed
morality and questioning spirit of Socrates had naturally led up; the
morality, because the form is the complex of characters that a thing ought
to have; the questioning, because it drew attention to the difference
between those elements of truth which experience brutally forces upon us,
and those of which reason persuades us, which latter make up the form. But
Aristotle's distinction set form, as well as matter, in a new light.
356. It must not be forgotten that Aristotle was an Asclepiad, that is,
that he belonged to a family which for generation after generation, from
prehistoric times, had had their attention turned to vital phenomena; and
he is almost as remarkable for his capacity as a naturalist as he is for
his incapacity in physics and mathematics. He must have had prominently
before his mind the fact that all eggs are very much alike, and all seeds
are very much alike, while the animals that grow out of the one, the plants
that grow out of the other, are as different as possible. Accordingly, his
dunamis is germinal being, not amounting to existence; while his entelechy
is the perfect thing that ought to grow out of that germ. Matter, which he
associates with stuff, timber, metal, is that undifferentiated element of a
thing which it must possess to have even germinal being. Since matter is,
in itself, indeterminate, it is also in itself unknowable; but it is both
determinable by form and knowable, even sensible, through form. The notion
that the form can antecede matter is, to Aristotle, perfectly ridiculous.
It is the result of the development of matter. He looks upon the problem
from the point of view of a naturalist. In particular, the soul is an
outgrowth of the body.
357. The scholastics, who regarded Aristotle as all but infallible, yet to
whom the ideas of a naturalist were utterly foreign, who were thoroughly
theological in their notions, admitted that the soul was a form. But then
they had great difficulty with those opinions of their master which
depended upon his conceiving of matter as more primitive than form. Their
notions of form were rather allied to those of Plato. The mode of being
that, in some sense, anteceded individual existence, they would have held
to be one in which there was form without matter, if awe of Aristotle had
not caused them to modify the proposition in one way or another. A
question, for example, which exercised them greatly was, how the form was
restricted to individual existence? For Aristotle there could not be any
such question, because he did not conceive of a form taking on
individuality, but of an undifferentiated matter taking on, or rather
developing, form, and individuality, perhaps, with it (412a, 7).
Best,
Gary
*Gary Richmond*
*Philosophy and Critical Thinking*
*Communication Studies*
*LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
*C 745*
*718 482-5690*
On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:09 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> List or anyone,
>
> Did Peirce himself compare or contrast his Firstness with Aristotle's
> Essences?
>
> Howard
>
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
