Gary, Howard, lists,
It seems to me that Fistness of Peirce by definition cannot be Form or
Matter, since Firstness exists all by itself without anything else.
Matter and Form are two and hence must be post-Firstness.
One possibility may be that Firstness is neither Matter nor Form but can
appear to the human mind as From or Matter, or both, depending on how one
prescinds Reality, just as light is neither waves or particles (according
to N. Bohr) but can appear as such upon measurement.
With all the best.
Sung
__________________________________________________
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy
Rutgers University
Piscataway, N.J. 08855
732-445-4701
www.conformon.net
> 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
>>
>
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