Chorismos

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chorismos ( χωρισμός chōrismós "separation") is a word of the ancient Greek language that has only been used as a philosophical term since the beginning of the 20th century. In this sense, it is understood to mean the separation which, according to the critics of Platonism, exists in the theory of ideas between the intelligible (purely spiritual) and the sensually perceptible world. The assumption that there is an irreconcilable separation is the starting point of an important argument that Aristotle advanced against the theory of ideas. If the separation cannot be bridged, there is no explanation for the connection between the two areas, which is assumed in Platonism.

Concept history

Aristotle used in his criticism of the theory of ideas the verb chōrízein ("separate", "separate") and the adverb chōrís ("in a separate, separate way"), but not the noun chōrismós . The noun was still uncommon among 19th century philosophers and historians of philosophy. It is first documented as a technical term by Paul Natorp (1903) and Ernst Cassirer (1925). The historian of philosophy Ernst Hoffmann (1880–1952) contributed significantly to the establishment of the term.

In the more recent literature on the history of philosophy, the term "chorismos" also serves to designate other separations in Aristotle, for example the separation between genus and species or between the "unmoved mover" and what is moved by it. The term is also used when examining Plato's examination of problems of separation.

Plato's understanding

A central theme of Plato's philosophy is the problem of the relationship between unity and plurality. The general with its comprehensive character stands for the unity and the diversity of the particular stands for the multiplicity.

In Plato's ontology , his doctrine of the hierarchy of things, the general is generally higher than the particular and individual. The (relatively) general is a (relatively) comprehensive unit. This unit is simple, not made up of parts. On the one hand, such a simple unity is the opposite of multiplicity (manifold), but on the other hand it also includes the multiplicity of everything that belongs to it. The more specific is involved in the more general to which it belongs, but because of its special existence it is something separate and isolated. It is subordinate to the more general, the properties of which it shows only partially and to a limited extent.

This is particularly true in the doctrine of ideas, in which the ideas play the role of the general and the unified, the individual things that of the particular and diverse. In contrast to the modern term "idea", the Platonic ideas are not mental products, not mere representations in the human mind, but rather form an independent, objectively existing metaphysical reality. They are the archetypes according to which the innumerable individual things in the sensually perceptible world are shaped. The realm of ideas is withdrawn from sensual perception, but can be recognized in a purely spiritual way. The ideas are immutable, perfect, and simply being. Sensually perceptible, ephemeral objects, on the other hand, only have a conditional and therefore imperfect being, which they owe to ideas.

The connection between ideas and sense objects consists in the fact that the ideas as archetypes are the generating entities and the sense objects as their images are the products. Plato describes this relationship as a relationship of participation ( méthexis ) or as an imitation ( mímēsis ). The participation relationship between the individual sense object and the idea in which it “has a part” is characterized by the fact that the sense object has the nature of the idea with certain restrictions and is thus to a certain extent “involved” in this nature or “imitates” it. The idea gives the sense object certain aspects of its own being, insofar as the naturally limited ability of the sense object to take in and realize it allows this.

Aristotle's conception

Aristotle formulated his criticism of the doctrine of ideas mainly in his now-lost writings On the Ideas and On Philosophy as well as in his Metaphysics . The chorismos was an important part of his argument.

Aristotle was of the opinion that in Platonism there was a gap between ideas and individual things. This cannot be bridged by the idea of ​​participation, because “participation” is not a philosophical term. The expression is useless for a philosophical argument because there is no clear definition for it. It was just an empty word and a poetic metaphor , the meaning of which Plato had not investigated.

The gap means that in Platonism the world of ideas and the world of sensory perception are two fundamentally different, separate areas. In this case, however, there could be no connection between them, since there was no mediating authority. The ideas could then not make themselves noticeable outside of their own area and could not exert any influence in the sensory world, i.e. also not produce the sense objects. If the general is separated from the individual things and exists separately, the apparently “general” ideas are only a special kind of separate, individual things. As such, they could not explain the existence of sense objects, that is, they could not fulfill the purpose of the theory of ideas. The assumption of separate ideas in addition to the sense objects thus only leads to a hypothetical doubling of the world, which does not contribute anything to the understanding of reality and is therefore unnecessary. In addition, if ideas existed separately like individual things and are therefore individual and not general, they are indefinable because only the general can be defined. Consequently, such ideas are also unrecognizable.

Even if ideas and individual things are similar, it does not follow from this that the ideas must be the archetypes of the individual things and that these are copied from them.

In reality the forms of the sense objects, which Platonism traces back to the ideas as the form causes , are perceptibly present in the sense objects as their ousia (essence). Only in this way are the sense objects what they are. Hence the chorismos from which Platonism proceeds cannot exist; the essence of a thing cannot be separate from the thing.

For Aristotle, the forms of the individual things do not depend on archetypes and exist only in the things themselves. They are not real, but only mentally separable from the sensually perceivable objects whose essence they constitute. This also applies to the soul as the form of the body and even to the mathematical objects; these only exist fictitiously without matter . Nevertheless, the mathematician is entitled to set the mathematical subjects as separate. Aristotle does not mean, however, that these are thought-generated, i.e. subjective, abstractions. Rather, numbers and geometrical figures exist for him in real terms, but only in the things that make up the changing world of sensory experience. Aristotle only assigns a separate existence to the divine “immobile mover”.

Plato himself recognized serious problems in the theory of ideas and addressed them in his dialogue with Parmenides . This also includes the problem of separating the world of ideas and the world of phenomena. This was discussed intensively in the academy. Aristotle took up these discussions.

It is possible that Aristotle's criticism of chorism was not primarily aimed at Plato's own concept, but at a certain variant of the theory of ideas that had been developed in Plato's school, the academy . The authors of this version were not known by name "friends of ideas" who emphasized a strict separation of being and becoming, which intensified the problem of chorismos. Similar to the “Friends of Ideas”, the young Socrates thinks as the fictional interlocutor of Parmenides in the dialogue Parmenides .

reception

middle Ages

Medieval Aristotelians like Thomas Aquinas († 1274) shared Aristotle's view. Thomas criticized Plato's doctrine of the "separate ideas that are by themselves", referring to Aristotle.

Modern

Nicolai Hartmann dealt with chorismos in a treatise published in 1941. In his opinion, the problem of chorismos is also relevant in modern philosophy insofar as it deals with the question of the reality of the general and its position in relation to the individual “in one and the same real world”. Hartmann believes that the Aristotelian metaphysics is so in agreement with the Platonic that it is itself affected by the author's criticism of chorismos. With Aristotle there is a chorism between form and matter despite their indissoluble connection, because they are heterogeneous and their connection remains a mystery. However, Plato shows the way to a solution with the hierarchical structuring of the world of ideas, the horizontal and vertical interweaving and community of ideas and the participation of every thing in a multitude of ideas. If the descent from the more general to the more specific leads down to the most special kind of ideas, then one longs for the essence of the individual things, and so the chorismos can be avoided. The tiered order in the Platonic world of ideas corresponds in Hartmann's model to the stratification of the categories into higher (more comprehensive) and lower (poorer content). In contrast to the hierarchical order of the Platonic ideas, the lower categories are the "stronger" ones. Hartmann only admits reality in the sense of complete, independent being to individual things.

In modern research it is mostly assumed that Plato's separation of the intelligible world from the sensory world results in the problem of the insufficiently explained connection between two ontologically different areas. The ontological differences are emphasized by Rafael Ferber , who uses the term “two-worlds theory”, Michael Erler , who also characterizes Plato's ontology as a “doctrine of two worlds ” and notes that Aristotle speaks “not without reason of a chorism”, and Thomas Alexander Szlezák . Some historians of philosophy take a contrary position, who believe that Aristotle misunderstood Plato's conception of the relationship between archetype and copy; in reality, Plato did not represent a dualistic ontology. There is no such thing as a “two-world concept” and therefore no chorism. Paul Natorp and Theodor Ebert emerged as spokesmen for this research area . According to Ebert's interpretation, the distinction between image and original is not to be understood in the sense of an ontological difference, but in a functional sense with reference to a cognitive process. According to this interpretation, Plato does not distinguish between levels of reality and corresponding levels of knowledge, but between a means of knowledge and what is known with the help of this means; he does not proceed from a division of the world into two parts, but from the indivisibility of the faculty of knowledge.

literature

Overview representations

Investigations

  • Chung-Hwan Chen: The Chorismos problem with Aristotle (= Philosophical Investigations , Volume 9). Limbach, Berlin 1940
  • Harold Cherniss : Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy . 2nd, unchanged edition, Russell & Russell, New York 1962 (older standard work; 1st edition 1944)
  • Gail Fine: Separation . In: Gail Fine: Plato on Knowledge and Forms. Selected essays. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-924559-2 , pp. 252-300
  • Johannes Huebner: Aristotle on separation and causation. The concept of εἶδος χωριστόν . Meiner, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-7873-1441-5 , pp. 87-98

Remarks

  1. ↑ Émile de Strycker examines the idea and terminology of separation in Aristotle: La notion aristotélicienne de séparation dans son application aux Idées de Plato . In: Autour d'Aristote , Louvain 1955, pp. 119–139 and Johannes Huebner: Aristotle on separation and causality. The concept of εἶδος χωριστόν , Hamburg 2000. Cf. the interpretation of Lynne Spellman: Substance and Separation in Aristotle , Cambridge 1995.
  2. ^ Paul Natorp: Plato's theory of ideas , Leipzig 1903, p. 73; Ernst Cassirer: The philosophy of the Greeks from the beginnings to Plato . In: Max Dessoir (Ed.): Textbook of Philosophy , Volume 1, Berlin 1925, pp. 7-138, here: 29.
  3. ^ Ernst Hoffmann: Platon , Zurich 1950, pp. 38 f., 46, 72 f., 89 and Platonism and Christian Philosophy , Zurich / Stuttgart 1960, pp. 232–234, 432 f .; see. Helmut Meinhardt: Chorismos . In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Vol. 1, Basel 1971, Sp. 1007 f., Here: 1008.
  4. ↑ Michael Erler provides an overview: Platon ( Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie . Die Philosophie der Antike , edited by Hellmut Flashar , Volume 2/2), Basel 2007, pp. 390–406.
  5. ↑ On the problem of the connection between ideas and the realm of the ephemeral see Michael Erler: Platon ( Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Die Philosophie der Antike , edited by Hellmut Flashar, Volume 2/2), Basel 2007, p. 397f.
  6. ^ Gail Fine (ed.): On Ideas. Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Theory of Forms , Oxford 1993 (critical edition of the fragments with English translation).
  7. ↑ See Renato Laurenti on this work: Les “dialogues” . In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques , Volume Supplément , Paris 2003, pp. 379–471, here: 395–409.
  8. ↑ Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b7-14, 991a20-22, 1079b24-26. Cf. Francesco Fronterotta: ΜΕΘΕΧΙΣ , Pisa 2001, pp. 397-412; Rolf Schönberger : Participation . In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 10, Basel 1998, Sp. 961–969, here: 961.
  9. ↑ Johannes Hübner: Aristotle on Separation and Causality , Hamburg 2000, pp. 92–94.
  10. ↑ Chung-Hwan Chen: The Chorismos Problem in Aristoteles , Berlin 1940, p. 93f.
  11. ↑ Chung-Hwan Chen: The Chorismos problem in Aristoteles , Berlin 1940, p. 104f.
  12. ↑ Chung-Hwan Chen: The Chorismos problem in Aristoteles , Berlin 1940, pp. 98-100.
  13. ↑ See also Julia Annas : The objects of mathematics in Aristotle . In: Andreas Graeser (Ed.): Mathematics and Metaphysics in Aristoteles , Bern 1987, pp. 131–147.
  14. ↑ Plato, Sophistes 246a – d, 248a ff.
  15. ↑ Chung-Hwan Chen: The Chorismos problem in Aristoteles , Berlin 1940, pp. 10-22; Hermann Schmitz : The theory of ideas of Aristoteles , vol. 2: Platon and Aristoteles , Bonn 1985, pp. 5f., 42–53, 56–59, 146; Wolfgang Wieland : Plato and the forms of knowledge , 2nd, extended edition, Göttingen 1999, pp. 107–124; Thomas Alexander Szlezák : Plato and the written form of philosophy , part 2: The image of the dialectician in Plato's late dialogues , Berlin 2004, p. 78f.
  16. ^ Latin ideae separatae , also formae separatae or species separatae per se subsistentes .
  17. ^ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I quaestio 6 articulus 4.
  18. ↑ Nicolai Hartmann: On the doctrine of the Eidos in Plato and Aristotle . In: Kleinere Schriften , Vol. 2, Berlin 1957, pp. 129–164 (first published in 1941).
  19. ↑ Rafael Ferber: Plato's idea of ​​the good , 2nd edition, Sankt Augustin 1989, pp. 19–48; Michael Erler: Platon ( Outline of the history of philosophy. The philosophy of antiquity , edited by Hellmut Flashar, Volume 2/2), Basel 2007, pp. 390, 393; Thomas Alexander Szlezák: The idea of ​​the good in Plato's Politeia , Sankt Augustin 2003, pp. 95–97.
  20. ^ Theodor Ebert: Opinion and knowledge in Plato's philosophy , Berlin 1974, pp. 181–193. John N. Findlay also turned against the “concept of two worlds” and the accusation of dualism and chorism based on it : Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines , London 1974, pp. XI f., 32-40, Pierre Aubenque: De l'égalité des segment intermédiaires dans la Ligne de la République . In: Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé u. a. (Ed.): Sophies maietores, “Chercheurs de sagesse”. Hommage à Jean Pépin , Paris 1992, pp. 37–44, here: 44 and Christoph Quarch : Sein und Seele , Münster 1998, pp. 132–149. In this sense, Richard Lewis Nettleship expressed himself in the 19th century : Lectures on the Republic of Plato , London 1963 (reprint; first publication 1897), pp. 238-240.