Privation (philosophy)

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Privation ( Latin privatio 'robbery', ancient Greek στέρησις stérēsis ) is the name in philosophy for the lack of a positive determinateness in a "thing" (property bearer ), which by nature is basically capable of having this quality. In some cases it is associated with the idea that what is missing should be there; privation is then viewed as a deficiency and therefore has a negative connotation .

A special use of the term is the definition of evil as the absence or impairment of the good , Latin privatio boni . Specifically, it is a matter of the absence or impairment of a certain natural good, for example health. Since the evil and thus also the evil is understood as a mere lack of something, it is denied an independent existence.

Aristotle

The term steresis , which means robbery in general , was introduced into philosophical terminology by Aristotle . It is translated in a philosophical context with loss, expropriation or deficiency , or it is rendered using the technical term privation , which is derived from the Latin translation. The opposite term hexis denotes the possession or having of something. In the treatise known as Category Writing, an early work, Aristotle discusses the various uses of the term in detail, and he goes into it again in his Metaphysics . He distinguishes several meanings of privation, with eyesight serving as an example. In a general sense, privation is used in all cases in which a thing does not have something that by its nature can be had, i.e. even when it is in principle impossible for this thing to have what is missing, for example an organ or a skill. For example, the privation of eyesight can be seen in plants because they cannot be endowed with eyes. The second meaning is when a thing could theoretically have something, but does not have it, depending on the species or individually. For example, the mole is by its nature without sight and a blind person due to its individual nature. The moles, unlike the plants, could in principle be endowed with eyesight, like other species of the genus to which they belong, and the blind could see according to his human nature if he had not been deprived of this ability. A third case occurs when a thing lacks something in a certain respect (say at a certain time or in a certain way), although that thing would by its nature be capable of having what is missing in this respect. In addition, privation can be gradual, for example when a thing could possess something without restriction, but only has it in an inadequate way or to a small extent.

The most general use of the term - privation as the absence of a quality in the broadest sense - is a topic in itself as negation . In philosophical discourse, privation is usually understood to mean the absence of a property that a thing could or should have. The term is used in logic , where it plays an important role in the doctrine of opposites , in ontology and in natural philosophy .

When determining the types of opposition, Aristotle differentiates between contradiction or contradictory opposition (antiphasis) , contrary opposition and privative opposition. In the case of an adversarial contradiction between two statements, an affirmation and a negation, one statement must be true and the opposite must necessarily be false, and only either the affirmation or the negation of the relevant determination can apply to each thing. In the case of contrary or privative opposition, on the other hand, a thing is in principle capable of accepting each of the two opposing provisions, but not in the same respect. For example, something can be white or black, but not both white and black in the same way, or someone can be blind or seeing, but not both at the same time. Every contradicting opposition is at the same time privative, because the thing lacks one of the two contradicting determinations, although it could belong to it; but not every privative opposition is also contrary. The opposite is when the pair of opposites consists of extremes, for example black and white; then the opposite quality is completely absent. The contrast is privative, but not contrary, when it is not maximal, as in black and gray, or when something is only missing in a certain respect.

In the Aristotelian natural philosophy , privation is one of the three principles ( archai ) that are needed for the analysis of becoming . The other two principles are the form ( eidos ) and the "underlying" ( hypokeimenon ) . According to the Aristotelian understanding, all becoming depends on these three factors. Aristotle understands form to mean that which gives matter a certain concrete quality - shape, structure, function, capabilities - and thereby makes a thing what it is. The hypokeimenon is the bearer of the properties, the substrate which underlies the changing qualities and ensures the continuity of the substance ; that is in itself formless, indefinite matter. The succession of the absence and presence of a form on an underlying constitutes the processes of becoming. By changing the form, the underlying takes on a new determination, and a privation occurs with respect to the opposite determination.

Plotinus

For Plotinus , the founder of Neoplatonism , the concept of steresis serves as an explanation for the existence of evil. In his system the absolutely unqualified matter is the extreme of privation in the sense of deprivation and inadequacy. It relates to the opposite extreme of the good as complete darkness relates to pure light. In human life, the evils arise from the fact that the soul , good in itself, has entered a material body and thus has become entangled in the fundamentally defective structures that characterize such an existence. The basis of this concept is Plotin's conviction that evil, including evil, does not have an independent existence, since badness exists only in the distance from good. Accordingly, “badness” or “meanness” cannot be assigned to matter as a real property. Rather, it is only bad insofar as it is furthest removed from the good in the ontological hierarchy. For the soul, however, matter becomes the cause of evil. The reason for this is that the soul tries in vain to bring matter to good and to make it better than it can be according to its nature. The inevitable failures of these efforts disappoint and debilitate the soul.

Augustine

The late antique church father Augustine , who was strongly influenced by Platonism , took up the Neoplatonic concept of privation and made it the basis of his doctrine of evil (Latin malum ). The malum includes everything bad, evil, imperfect, inadequate, depraved, wrong, unlawful and erroneous. For all these manifestations of negativity Augustine wanted to offer a comprehensive explanation by defining what they had in common. He developed his doctrine in the context of his examination of the Manichaeism worldview , according to which evil as an independent principle is hostile to good and a realm of absolute evil exists. On the other hand, the Church Father asserted that the evil was nothing more than the corruption of measure, form or natural order, thus nothing but an impairment of something good, a "deprivation". In his view, everything is inherently good. Any thing always remains good in terms of its own good nature, even if it is corrupt; only in terms of Corruption (corruptio) which it is subject, it is bad. The corruption is not an independent negative quality, but nothing but the loss of a positive quality. Therefore, there cannot be anything absolutely bad, because every deficiency has to relate to something good in itself, the impairment of which it is. Absolute badness would have to destroy good nature and thus also put an end to its own existence.

Medieval and modern reception

The formula found by Augustine became groundbreaking for medieval metaphysics . There was broad consensus on the theory of privation among medieval philosophers and theologians. So could Meister Eckhart find that this doctrine is the unanimous opinion of philosophers and religious authorities and the truth corresponded. However, Thomas Aquinas considered moral evil to be a “something” in the positive sense (positive aliquid) and only regarded other evils as privations. As an ontological concept, the theory of privation lost its meaning for the late medieval nominalists , since in nominalism evil is not viewed ontologically.

Augustine's formula also influenced discourse in the early modern period , but met with sharp criticism from the 17th century. Pierre Gassendi , a critic of Aristotelianism , found in 1658 that it was completely absurd to make privation a principle. In 1697, Pierre Bayle rejected the interpretation of the bad as privatio boni as well as all other attempts to solve the problem of the existence of the evil with reasons of reason. He was of the opinion that empirically it cannot be decided whether a morally evil act should be interpreted as an absence of good or a good act as an absence of evil.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , who stuck to the Augustinian concept, turned against this . In contrast to the theological tradition, Leibniz did not attribute the privatio boni to the fall of man and original sin , but considered it to be a necessary aspect of creation. Privation is an inevitable consequence of the inevitable limitation that is a characteristic of everything created. Immanuel Kant , who saw evil as an independent negative quantity, was of a different opinion .

Martin Heidegger examined the Aristotelian concept of privation. He pointed out that the steresis “can only be understood adequately in the area and on the basis of the Greek interpretation of being”. Aristotle seems to see it as a way of saying. Therefore he describes the warm as something like response (kategoria tis) and as appearance (eidos) , the cold as steresis . So - according to Heidegger - "warm" is a "promise" and "cold" is a "rejection". With the sentence “The water is cold”, the water is “denied” heat. Proceeding from this, according to Heidegger's interpretation, Aristotle's statement is to be interpreted that the steresis is “somehow appearance” (eidos pos) : In the cold as “removal in the manner of rejection” something tangible becomes apparent, “something west on"; “In what is felt, what is present, but at the same time worsens somewhat”, in such a way that “precisely because of the absence we particularly feel what is present”. The steresis as "absence" is not to be understood as the mere opposite of "presence" ( ousia ) , that is, simply absence, because it itself "is present". The “position in the appearance” (morphe) is “the presence of the absence”, it is twofold according to the words of Aristotle, because it “is always present in such a way that at the same time there is an absence in the presence”. Heidegger explains this with an example: “Today we say z. For example: "the bike is gone" and not only mean that it is gone, but we want to say: it is missing. "The absence then worries, and it can only do that because it is" there "itself; it “is”, that is: it constitutes a being.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Aristotle, Categories 12a26 ff.
  2. ↑ Aristotle, Metaphysics 1022b22-1023a7.
  3. ↑ See also Michael-Thomas Liske: sterêsis / Privation, Beraubung. In: Otfried Höffe (Ed.): Aristoteles-Lexikon , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 536-539. Cf. Burkhard Hafemann: Aristoteles' Transzendentaler Realismus , Berlin 1998, pp. 261–269.
  4. ↑ Michael-Thomas Liske: sterêsis / Privation, Beraubung. In: Otfried Höffe (Ed.): Aristoteles-Lexikon , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 536–539, here: 537.
  5. ↑ See also Michael-Thomas Liske: sterêsis / Privation, Beraubung. In: Otfried Höffe (Ed.): Aristoteles-Lexikon , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 536–539, here: 538 f .; Johannes Fritsche: Privation. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 7, Basel 1989, Sp. 1378–1383, here: 1379.
  6. ↑ See also Ingolf U. Dalferth: Malum , Tübingen 2008, pp. 145–152; Christian Schäfer : Unde malum , Würzburg 2002, pp. 105–169.
  7. ↑ See also Hermann Häring : The power of evil. Augustine's legacy , Zurich 1979, p. 34 f.
  8. ^ Augustine, De natura boni 4.
  9. ↑ See Christian Schäfer: Unde malum , Würzburg 2002, pp. 219–225.
  10. ↑ Rolf Schönberger: The existence of nothing. In: Friedrich Hermanni, Peter Koslowski (ed.): The reality of evil , Munich 1998, pp 15-47, here: f 17, f 37th.
  11. ↑ Christoph Schulte: Radikal böse , Munich 1988, pp. 126–129; Ingolf U. Dalferth: Malum , Tübingen 2008, pp. 125 f., 164 f.
  12. ↑ Christoph Schulte: Radikal böse , Munich 1988, pp. 129–132; Ingolf U. Dalferth: Malum , Tübingen 2008, pp. 198-200.
  13. ↑ Martin Heidegger: Wegmarken (= complete edition , 1st section, volume 9), Frankfurt am Main 1976, pp. 294–297. See Eric Schumacher: Heidegger on the Relationship between Sterēsis and Kairos: Heidegger's Interpretation of Aristotle's Sterēsis as the Basic Movement of Kairological Vision. In: International Journal of Philosophy and Theology , Vol. 3 No. 1, 2015, pp. 78–84.