NECESSITY AND TELEOLOGY IN ARISTOTLES PHYSICS

Jacob Rosen

A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE

BY THE DEPARTMENT OF
PHILOSOPHY
Advisers: Hendrik Lorenz and Benjamin Morison

November

 Copyright by Jacob Rosen,

ABSTRACT

Some of Aristotle's arguments for teleology involve a distinction between two

ways of being necessary: it seems that being necessary in one of these ways precludes being for the sake of something, while being necessary in the other way entails it. is second way, which consists in being necessary for the achievement of
an end, is occasionally (six times in all) referred to as a matter of hypothetical
( ) necessity. I inquire into the meaning of this phrase, beginning
with a survey of the uses to which Aristotle, throughout his writings, puts the notion of a hypothesis. One upshot is that hypothetically necessary ought simply
to mean necessary on an assumption, where (nearly enough) q is necessary on the
assumption that p i (i) not necessarily q and (ii) necessarily, if p then q. e only
passage where it is really dicult to understand the phrase this waywhere one is
tempted to think it needs a richer meaning, such as necessary for the achievement
of an endis the rst half of Physics II.. I oer a close reading of this passage,
one of whose virtues is that it preserves the phrases broad, straightforward
meaning. Finally I consider how widely hypothetical necessity, thus broadly interpreted, reaches in the natural world according to Aristotle. I suggest that there is
rather less of it than is generally supposed: this partly explains why it is called by
name only in connection with end-related cases. Regarding the anti-teleological
kind of necessitywhich might appear to involve necessitation of later states by
antecedent conditions, and so to be a species of hypothetical necessityI argue
that it is not something we would call necessity at all. I work to elucidate what it
is, as well as why and how far it is incompatible with teleological relations.

iii

CONTENTS

Abstract

iii

Introduction
.. What does hypothetically necessary mean
.. Teleology and necessity
.. Background: causation in Aristotle

Chapter . e meaning of hypothetically necessary

.. Where and how oen hypothesis appears
.. Hypothesis in the Organon
.. Hypothesis in physical writings and Metaphysics
.. Rhetoric: a hypothesis need not be a proposition
.. Politics: can hypothesis mean end?
.. From a hypothesis
.. Hypothetically necessary

Chapter . Reading Physics II.

.. e opening question
.. e wall theory
.. Disagreement
.. Disagreement
.. e relation between disagreements and
.. Extrapolating general principles
.. Compatibilism?
.. Remaining questions of interpretation

Chapter . Backward- and forward-owing necessity

.. e meaning of hypothetical
.. Being due to hypothetical necessity
.. Necessity in Parts of Animals
.. One-directional necessitation?
.. Intuitive plausibility
.. Result

Conclusion

Bibliography

iv

INTRODUCTION

One of Aristotles techniques for articulating his teleological picture of the natural
world, and for clarifying how it diered from other scientic views of his day, is
by invoking and distinguishing dierent senses of necessity. In one sense of the
term, Aristotle regards necessity as an exclusive alternative to teleology: he will
write not for the sake of something, but from necessity (Physics II., ),
or not from necessity, but for the sake of something (Generation of Animals II.,
). On the other hand, he sometimes calls something necessaryas do
weprecisely because it is required for the achievement of an end. (You can invite
someone to justify an action by asking, was that really necessary?) In these cases, necessity entails teleology.
ese two ways of being necessary are explicitly contrasted in Physics II., and
again in the rst chapter of Parts of Animals. It is not clear quite what the rst sort
of necessity, the anti-teleological kind, is. e second kind is clearer, in a way, but
it is hard to see how it is supposed to help explain natural phenomena that do not
involve any deliberation or intentional action. We can understand how the fact
that stone is necessary for the building of a house could gure in explaining an order sent o by a house-builder to the local quarry; but how does the fact, say, that
roots are necessary for nourishment help explain a plants putting down roots?
e house-builder can do some reasoning: this is to be done, this requires that,
therefore . A plant does no such thing. us it is a challenge to learn something
specically about Aristotles natural teleology from his discussions of necessity.

As my starting point, I raise a question not so much about what Aristotles doctrine was, as about the language he uses to express it. He appears to refer to the

end-related kind of necessity, in contrast to the other, as hypothetical ( ). is is curious, because on the face of it hypothetically necessary should
simply mean necessary on an assumption, or conditionally necessaryand being
conditional is hardly distinctive of end-related necessity. e other sort, if it is really necessity at all, should be conditional as well: it is necessary for this to happen
now if such-and-such conditions obtained earlier. A popular solution is to maintain that hypothetically necessary does not simply mean conditionally necessary,
but rather something more elaborate: for example, necessary as a conditio sine
qua non for the achievement of an end. But little argument has been given, beyond appeals to its immediate context, that the phrase has this more elaborate
meaning; and no one has explained how it could, given the meanings of its constituent words.
In chapter one, I survey the ways in which Aristotle uses the word hypothesis () throughout his writings. e description in Bonitz Index Aristotelicus is correct: a hypothesis is something assumed as a basis for something
(id quod ponitur tamquam fundamentum, Bonitz () ). Oen it is a
proposition assumed as a premise for some course of reasoning (sections . and
.), but other sorts of thing may also be assumed, and for other purposes (section
.). Sometimes what is assumed is an end, or a proposition stating that some end
is achieved; but hypothesis no more means end in such cases than father
means carpenter when it refers to a carpenter. To be sure of this, I look carefully at
the relevant passages (they are in the Politics: statements such as the hypothesis
of democracy is freedom), and show that they all make good sense with hypothesis meaning assumption (section .).
If hypothesis never means end, it is hard to see how a phrase of the form
+ hypothesis could mean anything like for the achievement of an
end.

See section ., including note on page , for references.

Focusing specically on the prepositional phrase (hypothetically), I check the passages in which it modies something other than necessity
(section .). Some are very obscure, but the intelligible passages are all intelligible
when we take to mean on an assumption. It seems that hypothetically necessary means no more than necessary on an assumption. ere is no
great diculty interpreting it this way when it appears in Parts of Animals, Generation and Corruption, and De Somno (section .).
at leaves the rst half of Physics II., one of the passages in which Aristotle
contrasts the anti-teleological and end-related kinds of necessity. One task of
chapter two is to resist the appearance that hypothetical necessity refers specically to the latter in contrast to the former. is my reading does: it results that
Aristotles train of thought turns out poorly signposted, but still cohesive and in
decent order (section .). is leaves us with a choice: either say that a technical
term is used with a meaning nowhere securely attested (i.e., that hypothetically
necessary means necessary for the achievement of an end), or say that a passage
has misleading signposts. I opt for the latter, but what is most important is to see
the choice. Aristotles work quite generally displays a rare mixture of precision and
sloppiness, and as interpreters we need to have a view as to which are the ways in
which he is careful and which are the ways in which he is not.
Now if I am right that hypothetically necessary means nothing more than
necessary on an assumption, then we need to explain why the phrase is used exclusively to describe things which are necessary relative to an end (chapter three).
Why does Aristotle never say, for example, that Socrates death was necessary on
the assumption that he drank hemlock, and therefore hypothetically necessary?
We could put it down to coincidence: aer all, the phrase hypothetically necessary appears only six times in Aristotles entire corpus. Or perhaps Aristotle in-

. Physics II., , ; Parts of Animals ., , ; Generation and Corruption

., ; De Somno , .

troduced the phrase during some period of fascination with the parallel between
natural teleological explanations, on the one hand, and chains of practical reasoning on the other, the latter of which, on Aristotles model, precisely involve
deducing what is to be done now from the hypothesis of an ends future achievement. In contrast there may have been no practice, as there is in physics classrooms today, of assuming initial conditions and deducing the later state of a system. But a third explanation would be that, according to Aristotles substantive
views about nature, every interesting case of conditional necessity in nature just is
a case in which it is necessary for something to obtain or occur if some given end
will be realized. Maybe he didnt believe that earlier conditions necessitate later
states.
e last proposal may seem like a non-starter, given that Aristotle oen writes
in his biological works of things coming about from necessity based upon antecedent conditions, such as a mans head being moist, or an animal being frightened (section .). But if, as I suggest in section . and argue more fully in .,
these passages employ a version of (so-called) necessity that is not really necessity
at all, then the proposal turns out to have some plausibility. I explore how it can
be supported, and what qualications are needed to make it defensible (sections
..).
All this work shows that we do well to take the phrase to have a
consistent meaning across dierent contexts, and a meaning that arises compositionally from the meanings of its component words. Besides the immediate consequences to the interpretation of Physics II. and Parts of Animals I., this result has
broader methodological implications. is not the only technical
phrase that interpreters have tended to interpret according to the convenience of
the passage immediately before them, while exerting less eort than they might to
discover a unied meaning of the term throughout the corpus. Of course there is
no guarantee that Aristotles linguistic usage is fully consistent; sometimes
pressures of context must win out over the desire for uniformity. However, re-

sources such as the TLG make it easier than ever before to examine every appearance of a term, and try to nd out whether one meaning can account for all of
them. When dealing with a term of art in particular, not one of natural language, I
think we should be biased toward ascribing the fewest dierent meanings possible. is dissertation is an experiment in applying that bias to the interpretation
of hypothetical necessity. I think it has been fairly successful, and aim in the future to apply similar methods to other terms, such as (accidentally) and (simply, without qualication).

My second object is to clarify Aristotles view of natural teleology itself, and how
he understands its dierence from others that were current during his time. I take
somewhat dierent approaches to this question in chapter (on Physics II.) and
in chapter (on Parts of Animals I.).

.. e intrinsic direction of causes and changes

At the beginning of Physics II., Aristotle illustrates (or rather parodies) a type of
explanation which purports to account for a things generation wholly in terms of
an anti-teleological kind of necessity. What exactly are the essential features of
this type of explanation? I believe they are best understood in terms of intrinsic
direction toward an end, or lack thereof, on the part of activities and of the ecient causal powers that bring them about. In a nutshell, a process occurs from
necessity in the present sense just in case every basic process from which it is
composed is intrinsically aimless. Aristotle seems to presuppose a plausible principle linking processes to their ecient causes, namely that a basic process is intrinsically aimless just in case its proximate ecient cause is an intrinsically aimless power. (To get a sense of the dierence between an intrinsically aimless power

and an end-directed power, compare fragility with the power for photosynthesis.
Of course fragility may serve an end in the design of some complex objectperhaps a fusebut in its own right, I think, it is just a brute disposition.)
In two other works, Generation of Animals (see ..) and Generation and Corruption (see ..), Aristotle makes room for a distinction between what (if anything) an activity is for intrinsically or in its own right, and what it may be for in
virtue of the larger context in which it is embedded. In particular, an intrinsically
aimless activity may count as occurring for an end if it occurs at the instance or
under the control of a cause or power which is directed towards that end. (As far
as I can see, this cause will always be a non-proximate cause. e motions in a
clock seem to me a good illustration of the phenomenon.) is possibility does
not seem to be countenanced in Physics II.; perhaps this is a pedagogically motivated simplication, or perhaps the other works were written later and show a
process of renement in Aristotles ideas.
e key point of dispute between Aristotle and his theoretical opponents is
presented in this chapter as one about what nature of ecient causes there are,
and whether or not certain changes and processes are directed towards the attainment of ends.

.. Order of explanation and of necessitation

Aristotles discussions of hypothetical and other kinds of necessity have made it

seem to some that the question of teleology hinges crucially on the temporal direction of necessitation in the natural world: necessitation of later states by earlier
ones is non-teleological; necessitation of earlier states by later ones is teleological.
is seems to be a mistake. Suppose there were an infallible doctor: necessarily, if
he initiates treatment, then the patient recovers. Surely this does not preclude him
from applying medical treatment for the sake of his patients health.

Instead of necessitation, interpreters may look to order of explanation. For

example, when Aristotle says that a wall is not due to its ingredients except as due
to matter, but comes about for the sake of protecting things, he is oen taken to
be asserting the priority (in some sense) of nal causation over material causation
(see .).
I have tried to avoid this approach in chapter . I nd these sorts of claims obscure and not very helpful in getting to the heart of Aristotles position. It seems
better to move away from ideas about what is more a cause than what, or what
causes what rst (where the order is not temporal order), and instead try to articulate yes/no questions about whether or not a given cause or change has a certain characteristic. Nevertheless, it must be granted that there is something to the
question of order. is is explicit in Parts of Animals, where Aristotle raises the
question whether animal generation should be explained in terms of what the animal is like once grown, or the other way around. His attitude is indicated by the
remark,
, , , .
It is more the case that this and that goes on in house-building because the
form of the house is such-and-such, than that the house is such-and-such a
thing because it comes into being in a given way. (PA I., .)
Given that there is of course causation in both directionsnal causation
from house to house-building, ecient causation from house-building to house
it is hard to know what to make of the idea that one is more due to the other than
vice versa. Still, for all that causal relations come in various kinds and run in more
than one direction, Aristotles theory of science requires us to order our knowledge according to a single, one-directional relation of dependence. In creating a
science of biology, we must settle which facts are to be demonstrated from which,

All translations from the Greek are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

and hence must make all-considered judgments as to which facts are more basic
and more explanatory.
erefore, in chapter I give myself over somewhat to questions of order. I
propose that Aristotles nature includes no causally interesting necessitation of later states by earlier ones, and do my best to make this proposition plausible. Given
that a science consists of less fundamental truths demonstrated from more fundamental truths, and that demonstration requires necessary entailment, this has implications as to which propositions will gure as the more fundamental truths in
an Aristotelian science of biology. In particular, we will not nd facts about ecient causal processes guring as principles from which the results of those
processes are demonstrated.

. :

Aristotle conceives of being somethings endbeing what it is foras a way of being among its causes. So before getting into the main body of the dissertation, I
would like to make some general remarks about causation in Aristotle. Some of
what I say will be controversial, but I wont try to argue for it here. My main purpose in saying it is to articulate a number of presuppositions that will be in the
background of my discussions later on.

.. Causal relations are metaphysical relations

Because Aristotles notion of an aition or aitia is not exactly the same as our notion of a cause, scholars have experimented with translations other than cause. A
popular one is explanation (or explanatory factor, vel sim.). e motivation is

Since aitiai are whatever answers a why-question, and whatever answers a why-question is

good, but glossing (what I will continue to call) causation in terms of explanation
can lead to confusion. Explaining something is an epistemic activity, whereas causation is a metaphysical relation out there in the world. We should be careful both
that we do not identify causal and explanatory relations, and that we do not reverse their order of priority. Causation is prior to explanation; the holding of causal
relations is what grounds the correctness of correct explanations.
Another point is that the appropriateness of an explanation is subject to very
complicated pragmatic constraints, so that a lot of extraneous, confusing issues
enter the discussion when we replace questions about causation with questions
about what is explanatory.

.. e four causes are four causal relations.

Aristotles view is not that there is a single causal relation and four types of thing
which can stand in this relation to something, or four (non-causal) relations in
which a cause of X might stand to X. Rather, it is that there are four dierent
causal relations. Aristotle introduces them as , ways, and oen refers to
them not with bare nouns such as form or end but with adverbial phrases such
as as form or as an end (cf. p. , note ). ese are dierent ways in which
one thing can ground or be responsible for another.
is means that even when the same thing is, for example, the formal cause of
X and the nal cause of X, there is still a distinction between formal and nal
cause. e one thing stands in two dierent relations to X: the relation of formally
causing on the one hand, and the relation of nally causing on the other. e same
goes when a single thing is the material cause of X and the moving cause of X.

an explanation, it follows that an aitia is simply an explanatory factor, whatever this may be,
Moravcsik (), p. . It is a great improvement to cease thinking of an aitia as a cause and to
treat it instead as an explanation, a because, Annas (), p. . Nussbaum () translates
reason. Barnes () uses both reason and explanation, explaining himself on pp. .
Freeland () and Gotthelf () advocate returning to the traditional translation cause.

(Hence, if a theorist says that the basic material constituents of the world are responsible for all the changes in the world, it would be wrong to describe that theorist as appealing only to material causation. e theorist appeals both to material
and to moving causation: its just that he says that the material and moving causes
in nature are the same stus.)

.. What sorts of things are caused

Aristotles causal talk is quite irregular. However, we can class many of his causal
ascriptions under four main heads, according to whether what is being caused is
substantial or non-substantial, and whether it is an object/feature or a change.
us a cause may be a cause of a ; it may be a cause of a things
or ; it may be a cause of a things having some feature, in which case it
is a cause of to ; or it may be a cause of a non-substantial
change, in which case it will be a cause of F to .

.. Examples

... Moving causes

: the house-builder is a cause of the house.

.
Philoponus in Ph may be making this mistake when he writes (.-),
, , ; If forms invariably followed upon the power of the matter, what need would there be for the productive causeI
mean, nature? (emphasis added). Charles (), p. seems to make a similar slip when he
writes, Many of [Aristotles] predecessors erred, in his view, in thinking that such phenomena
[viz., physical, biological and psychological] could be explained in terms of material causation
alone. It is true that according to Aristotle most of the earliest philosophers dealt only with material causation, i.e., with the question what things are made from (Meta. ., ). But in the
passage Charles quotes, , Aristotle is pointing up the insuciency of appealing to material elements as the only moving causes. Charles himself more correctly describes Aristotles target a
few sentences later as the wish to employ only the resources of material causation and ecient
causation (involving the matter alone) (p. , emphasis added).

: the house-builder is a cause of the houses coming into being.

: the house-painter is a cause of being blue to the house.
: the house-painter is a cause of becoming blue to the house.

... Final causes

: shelter is a cause of the house.

: the house, and therefore shelter, are causes of the houses coming into being.
: prettiness is a cause of being blue to the house.
: being blue and prettiness are causes of becoming blue to the house.

... Formal causes

: the capacity to shelter bodies and goods is the formal cause of the
house.
: the form of house (i.e., the capacity to shelter bodies and goods) is
the formal cause of the houses coming into being.
: the color blue is the formal cause of being blue to the house.
: the color blue is the formal cause of becoming blue to the house.

... Material causes

: wood and stone are causes of the house.

. Assuming a change is goal-directed, the endpoint of the change will be its immediate nal
cause. Whatever the endpoint in turn is for, will be a remote nal cause of the change. See ...
Metaphysics ., . I dont insist that this is a perfectly adequate denition of house.
.
. Im not sure about this, but my best guess is that the formal cause of a change is the form of
the changes endpoint. (Perhaps if the change is from form to privation, its formal cause is the
form of its starting point.) Cf. Phys II., -.

: wood and stone are causes of the houses coming into being (by
underlying the change in question).
: the house is a cause of being blue to the house (since it is the subject, ). Stone is a cause of solidity to the house.
: the house is a cause of becoming blue to the house (since it is the
subject, , of the change).

. Aristotles examples of material causes in Phys II. are always the matter of a thing, not the
subject of an attribute. However, his characterization of the material cause at as that out of
which a thing comes to be and which persists ( ) harkens back
to the discussion of change in Phys I., where the persisting () subject of an accidental
change and of its resultant attribute was treated in the same way as the matter of generation and of
its resultant substance. Cf. Metaphysics ., -.

CHAPTER THE MEANING OF HYPOTHETICALLY NECESSARY

ere are two broad questions in this dissertation. One is about the meaning of
the phrase hypothetically necessary; the other is about the nature of Aristotles
natural teleology and his understanding of how it diered from other current
theoretical approaches. e present chapter is devoted entirely to the rst. Its job
is to convince us that we should go into the interpretation of the central text to be
treated in chapter two, namely Physics II., with a strong presumption as to the
meaning of hypothetically necessary in that text. e presumption is that this
phrase means simply necessary on an assumption, or conditionally necessary, and
does not carry any teleological content.
My method is simple. I begin with an overview of Aristotles use of the word
hypothesis on its own, and show that it never means anything like end. e only
context in which it has been thought to have such a meaning is in the Politics,
where Aristotle occasionally refers to the ends of political constitutions and their
legislators as hypotheses of those constitutions and legislators. e relevant passages can be understood perfectly well by taking hypothesis to have its usual
meaning of assumption or premise. Next, I go through every appearance of the
prepositional phrase from a hypothesis ( , also translated hypothetically) in which it modies something other than necessity. As we should expect given the meaning of hypothesis on its own, the prepositional phrase never
means anything like relative to an end. Finally, I discuss the passages outside of
Physics II. in which Aristotle uses the phrase hypothetically necessary ( or , literally necessary from a hypothesis). Although the things called hypothetically necessary are in fact necessary for the achievement of some end, there is no good reason to incorporate this

Bonitz () . Cf. Newman () ad .

fact into the meaning of the phrase hypothetically necessary. e passages are
naturally understood when we take it to mean necessary on an assumption.

e word hypothesis is used times in Aristotles corpus. It occurs most frequently by far in the Prior Analytics ( times), especially in discussions of proof
by reductio (where the proposition that is or should be assumed for reductio is
called a hypothesis) and of hypothetical syllogisms more generally (these syllogisms or their conclusions are completed or deduced from or through a hypothesis). e Politics comes in a distant second with occurrences, and the Posterior
Analytics comes third with .
Of the words appearances, are in the phrase , which I will
translate hypothetically or from a hypothesis. is phrase is used times in
the Prior Analytics, always describing hypothetical syllogisms, and it is used in the
same way times in the Topics and probably times in the Posterior Analytics
(this is in AnPst ., where Aristotle considers whether one could demonstrate a
denition hypothetically: it isnt completely clear what he has in mind, but it looks
as though hes talking about hypothetical syllogisms). at leaves further uses
of , and these are quite varied: Aristotle speaks of knowing hypothetically, of being good hypothetically, of being false hypothetically, of being a
citizen hypothetically, and so on. Six times, he speaks of being necessary hypothet-

. e numbers in this section derive from TLG searches. e TLG database does not include
alternate manuscript readings, and contains occasional misprints; but for the purposes of a general
overview, I think we may have adequate condence in the numbers. Of course, the frequency with
which a term appears in a work is not a sure guide to the importance of the term in that work. I
am using these numbers merely to give a preliminary orientation.
. From a hypothesis is used to modify four dierent verbs in such contexts. () show
(): AnPr ., , , , . () argue (): AnPr ., . ()
complete (): AnPr ., , ; ., , . () agree (): AnPr .,
.

ically. It is this usage that I ultimately want to understand: what does Aristotle
mean when he calls something hypothetically necessary?
Here is a list of works containing the word hypothesis, along with the number
of times hypothesis appears in the work.

AnPr

EE

PA

Pol

Frag

GA

AnPst

Phys

lineis

Meta

NE

Poet

Top

Rhet

somno

DC

GC

spiritu

e paradigmatic uses of hypothesis seem to be found in the logical works.

.. Hypothesis as a kind of deductive principle

e only explicit discussions of what a hypothesis is are in Posterior Analytics

. and .. ere are some problems of interpretation, but it seems pretty certain that the same notion of hypothesis is under discussion in both passages, and
that the following things are true of it:

. A hypothesis is a proposition ().

. It is a deductive principle ( ), which means or entails
that
a. ere is no demonstration of it, and

b. It gures as a premise in demonstrations.

. It gures as a deductive principle for a single special science (unlike axioms,
which are principles of all sciences, or at least of more than one science).

A demonstration is a deduction that yields knowledge of its conclusion. One

condition on this is that its premises be more basic (more knowable by nature)
than its conclusion. So point () entails that hypotheses are true (since only
truths can be known) and that they cannot be deduced from any truths more basic than they are. However, they are not the most basic truths there are: a hypothesis is in some sense less fundamental and less self-evident than an axiom. In .
Aristotle says that that which through itself necessarily is and necessarily seems
to be is not a hypothesis. Probably he thinks that such a thing is an axiom.
us an axiom, such as the proposition that one thing cannot both belong and not
belong to another thing at the same time and in the same respect, would be true
through itself and would have to be seen to be true through itself. In contrast, a
hypothesis fails at least one of these two conditions. Perhaps one acquires condence in a hypothesis by induction () rather than by mere consideration
of the proposition itself, so that it is not through itself that the hypothesis seems to
be the case.
Does a hypothesis also fail to be through itself? It is not clear what this would
amount to. Aristotle could hold that hypotheses are true in virtue of some other

. See Barnes () ad (pp. ) for the question whether axioms must be common to
all sciences or just more than one.
. AnPst .,
. AnPst ., ; cf. -.
. A., -. .
. Barnes (), p. thinks that Aristotle is referring to all the principles of a science, not just
axioms, and that hypothesis in AnPst A. does not mean what it meant in A., i.e. a kind of
principle of a science. is seems to me to rest on a misunderstanding of , for which see
the next section and note .
. But see Bolton (), p. for an argument that propositions known inductively are known
through themselves (emphasis original).

truth(s) obtaining, but it is not clear what those other truths would be. ey must
not entail the hypothesis, since otherwise it would not be a deductive principle (it
could be deduced from truths more basic than it, and that would be to demonstrate it). Could they be the individual instances of the general truth stated by the
hypothesis? (A holds of this B, A holds of that B, etc., where the hypothesis is
A holds of all B?) However exactly it works, a hypothesis is a second rate principle, a runner-up to axioms.
In addition to distinguishing them from axioms, Aristotle also distinguishes
hypotheses from denitions (). A denition, like a hypothesis and unlike
an axiom, is a principle of a single science. Aristotles descriptions of the dierence between hypotheses and denitions are hard to sort out, and it would be distracting to worry about them now. In some sense or other, a denition is supposed to make clear what something signies, whereas a hypothesis says that
something is or is not. It is unclear whether this means that denitions are not
propositions whereas hypotheses are, or whether denitions and hypotheses are
two dierent kinds of proposition (e.g., with denitions stating that such-andsuch is the essence of a kind, and hypotheses stating that a kind exists or that a
given item is a member of a given kind).
We can now add two more features of hypotheses as treated in Posterior Analytics . and . Since these two pretty much complete the picture, I will reproduce the full list.
. A hypothesis is a proposition.
.a.It says that something is or is not (unlike a denition).
. It is a deductive principle, which means or entails:
.a. ere is no demonstration of it;
.b. It gures as a premise in demonstrations.

See emistius in AnPst .; Philoponus in AnPst .; Barnes (), pp. -.

. It gures as a deductive principle for a single special science (unlike an

axiom).
. Its truth is not maximally self-evident or self-grounding (unlike an axiom).

... Relative hypotheses

At a certain point in ., Aristotle considers a case in which a demonstrable

proposition is not demonstrated, but simply assumed. He has a didactic context
in mind: a teacher might invite a pupil simply to accept something as true without
proof (presumably, justication is to be given later). When this happens, Aristotle
says, the proposition assumed is not a hypothesis full stop, but it is a hypothesis
relative to the student ().
is seems exactly the right thing to say, given the characterization of hypotheses I have been summarizing. Speaking without qualication, there is a
demonstration of the proposition, and so it is not a deductive principle (see .a
above). Relative to the learner, on the other hand, there is no demonstration of it.
e learner deduces things from it, but does not deduce it from other things; it
functions for him as a principle.

.. Reduction to the impossible and other hypothetical syllogisms

Although the usage Ive been discussing is the one that is best described in
Aristotle, it is not the one that is most commonly used. e most numerous use of
hypothesis is in the Prior Analytics, and this in two contexts. One is the discus-

. , .
. Barnes, by contrast, seems to take Aristotle to be introducing a new sense of hypothesis
(the type of supposition dened here, Barnes (), p. ), on which it is a relative term. is
misses the force of lines , which describe the terms relative application precisely in terms
of its primary, unqualied use: it is a hypothesis not without qualication, but only in relation to
that person. Waitz (), p. too misses the contrast between and , so that
in his eyes Aristotles statements in . and . inter se videntur pugnare.

sion of so-called hypothetical syllogisms; the other is the discussion of proof by

reduction to the impossible. In neither context is it plausible that Aristotles hypotheses are intended to be deductive principles.

... Hypothetical syllogisms

Hypothetical syllogisms are ones in which the premises somehow do not entail the conclusion in a fully direct way; instead, the conclusion is drawn or
proven from or through some additional hypothesis ( , ). e primary examples are arguments by reductio, which seem to rely on
the hypothesis that whatever entails something false (or impossible) is itself false
(or impossible). In the Topics Aristotle mentions arguments in which a conclusion
is rst drawn for some subset of the items of interest, and then generalized based
on the hypothesis that whatever holds of some holds of all.
Aristotle doesnt spell out in detail what the role of the hypothesis is in a hypothetical syllogism. My impression is that it does not gure as a premise, but rather
serves to license an inferential move. If so, then it is clearly not functioning as a
hypothesis of the kind described in Posterior Analytics A. and , since that kind
of hypothesis was said to serve as a premise in demonstrations. Furthermore, arguments by reductio can be employed in the examination of any subject matter, so
that the hypothesis they depend on must not be proper to any one special science.

. Topics .,
. Smith (), p. thinks the hypothesis does serve as a premise: in his comment on A.
, he writes, us, these arguments are deductive only from (ek) an assumption, i.e.,
deduce from an assumption as a premise: they are not really deductions of their ultimate conclusions, but of something else. In Ross (), pp. -, hypothetical argument is analyzed into a
syllogistic and a non-syllogistic part, with the hypothesis being used in the non-syllogistic part,
hence not at least as a formal premise.

... Hypothesis as what is assumed for reductio

One very common context for hypothesis is when Aristotle is discussing

proof by reduction to the impossible. He uses the word to refer to the proposition
that is or should be assumed for reductio, i.e., the contradictory of the proposition
to be proved, or occasionally to a proposition that might mistakenly be assumed,
such as the contrary of the proposition to be proved. Again, these are obviously
not hypotheses of the kind described in Posterior Analytics A. and , since those
are true and are principles, whereas these are false (or at least taken by the arguer
to be false), and are assumed in order then to be rejected, not as premises from
which to infer further truths.

In the physical writings and in the Metaphysics, the meaning of hypothesis typically seems close to the one given in Posterior Analytics A. and . A hypothesis
is a proposition taken to be true without proof, and used as a more or less fundamental premise.
In some contexts it looks as though the hypothesis might count among the
principles of a special science. For example, in De Caelo, Aristotle works with an
assumption as to what simple motions there are, and the assumption that for each
simple body, a dierent simple motion is natural to it. He refers to these as the
rst or primary () hypotheses, and as the hypotheses concerning the
motions. In the Physics, he says that a special scientist need not concern himself

. Contradictory: AnPr ., , ; ., , ; ., passim; ., passim. Contrary:

AnPr ., .
. e only simple motions are straight and circular, De Caelo ., . ere is a single
natural motion of each of the simple bodies, De Caelo ., , .
. De Caelo ., and .
. De Caelo ., .

with objections to the principles of his science, and that in physics it is a hypothesis that nature is a principle of change. In Metaphysics ., the Philosophical
Lexicon entry on principle (), the hypotheses of demonstrations are cited
as examples of principles in the sense of that from which a thing is knowable primarily. In these passages a hypothesis is at least a quite fundamental premise,
and possibly a deductive principle of a science.
In Metaphysics and , Aristotle speaks several times of the hypotheses
maintained by believers in Forms and/or separate mathematical objects. Since
the hypotheses are false (., ), they cannot be genuine deductive principles; but they seem to be fundamental premises of theories, at any rate.
In places it isnt clear how fundamental an assumption a hypothesis is meant
to be, where it lies on the continuum between a principle of a science and a merely
local, tentative assumption. Examples: () It is clear that the surface of water is
like this [sc. spherical] if we take as a hypothesis that water by nature always ows
into what is more hollow: and what is nearer to the center is more hollow. ()
Certain theorists say things contrary to mathematical doctrines (
); and yet it is right () either not to displace them [sc. the doctrines], or to do so by means of accounts more trustworthy than the hypotheses. () In Generation of Animals, Aristotle proposes three hypotheses about the
generative motions imparted by parents, in order to explain why ospring may resemble one or another ancestor to a greater or lesser degree. It is not clear
whether these are meant to be deep principles, or just plausible ad hoc assump-

. Physics VIII., -
. Metaphysics ., -. ,
, .
. Metaphysics M, , ; ; , . N, , .
. De Caelo ., -.
. De Caelo ., -.
.
. GA IV., -.

tions which Aristotle hoped eventually to replace or derive from more basic
truths.

. :

According to Bonitz, in rhetoric the word hypothesis signies the topic under
discussion (eam rem signicat de qua agitur, -). us at Rhetoric III.,
, Aristotle says that unusual and high-sounding words are more appropriate to poetry than to prose, because in prose the hypothesis is lesser than in poetry.
Roberts (in the Oxford translation edited by Barnes) oers subject-matter as a
translation of hypothesis here.
Bonitz also cites the phrase speak in relation to a hypothesis (
), at Rhet II., , as an example of this usage. In fact, it isnt clear that
the word has the same meaning here. Aristotle has just said that the same methods are applicable whether one must convince many judges or only one; he now
says, and likewise whether one is addressing someone who disagrees or a hypothesis. Hypothesis does not seem to mean the topic under discussion, as Bonitz
suggests. Perhaps it refers to an assumed opponent, as opposed to an actual one.
In any case, these examples indicate that a hypothesis is not always a proposition. Linguistically, the word should signify an act of laying down or positing or
assuming (), and by extension the result of such an act, i.e., something
laid down or posited or assumed. We know that propositions are not the only
thing that one can assume. For instance, Aristotle says in NE VI. that cleverness
is the ability to achieve any assumed goal ( , ).

. , . -.
. is is parallel to how means the activity of growing and also that which grows (Physics
II., ) and how means both the activity of making and what is made (specically
poetry).

. :

Bonitz claims that in Aristotles political doctrine, the notion of a hypothesis is

close to the notions of an end or goal () on the one hand, and a dening
characteristic () on the other. (e notions of end and dening characteristic are, of course, not equivalent. e idea must be that any kind of constitution
will have some feature that it both aims to instantiate (the feature is an end), and
to some degree succeeds in instantiating (the feature is a dening characteristic):
for example, a constitution is a democracy only if it aims at, and to some extent
succeeds in achieving, freedom.) is claim should be considered carefully. For if
there are any contexts in which hypothesis really means something like end, this
would be evidence that necessary from a hypothesis can mean something along
the lines of necessary for an end.
However, Bonitz himself explains Aristotles usage in a way that makes clear
how the word hypothesis can be used to refer to ends without meaning end.
e explanation, to quote Bonitz quoting Aristotle, is that in actions, that for the
sake of which is a principle, just as hypotheses are in mathematics. is statement is based in Aristotles model of practical (and productive) reasoning, according to which the reasoner begins from a premise describing the realization of an
end, and makes a series of inferences (presumably relying on additional premis-

. in doctrina politica (quoniam ,

. ) non multum diert a notionibus et
.
. Of course, means from, not for; but the phrase could be taken to express the thought that
something is necessitated by, its necessity derives from, an end.
. Bonitz , quoting NE ., .
. e premise in reasoning seems to be that an end must or needs to be realized. In Movement
of Animals ch. , Aristotles examples involve verbal adjectives ( , ;
, ; , ; ,
-; , ) or the verb need ( , -). NE . gives an
example using a premise about what is advantageous ( , -)
and an example involving a premise about what is required ( ,
). On the other hand, when something is necessary on a hypothesis, the hypothesis would

es about what means are available and eective) until she arrives at the specication of something it is now in her power to do. Given this model, when one
speaks of premises or assumptions in connection with practical matters, it will be
clear that one is referring either to propositions about ends or to propositions
about the available means to those ends. Oen, it will be clear that one is referring
specically to propositions about ends. For example, if I speak of the hypothesis
of a democratic legislator in contrast to that of a tyrant, it will be clear that I am
talking about his end, since the interesting dierences between a democrat and a
tyrant lie in their ends, not in the means available to them.
Here, then, is a possible explanation for Aristotles use of hypothesis in the
Politics to refer to the ends of political actors and regimes. Let us look at the passages and see whether the explanation succeeds.

.. Socrates hypothesis in the Republic

Perhaps the best place to start is with Aristotles criticism of Platos Republic,
since the role of a political hypothesis as a starting point for argument is easiest to
see there. In Politics II., Aristotle raises a number of objections to the sharing
of wives, children, and property advocated in Republic book . His objections are
of two broad types. On the one hand, he rejects the basis on which Platos Socrates
rests his arguments for communism, namely the claim that a city should be as
unied as possible. On the other hand, he argues that Socrates communist
arrangements would not conduce to unity in any case. We can think of the rst
sort of objection as external, and the second as internal (since it aims to show that
Socrates proposals are unsuccessful by his own standards). Here is how Aristotle
introduces his discussion:

seem to be the proposition that an end is or will be achieved, not the proposition that it should or
must be achieved. (It is not necessary that if there should be a house tomorrow, then foundations
are laid today.)

 ,
,
. ,
, , , , . <> .
ere are many diculties with having everybodys wives be common, and in
particular, the reason for which Socrates says that things should be legislated
this way can be seen not to result from his logoi (words, arguments, discussion). Moreover, the end which he says the city must attain is impossible as
he states it, and how it should be interpreted is not at all determined. I mean,
for the entire city to be as far as possible one, on the grounds that this is best:
Socrates takes this as his hypothesis. (Politics II., )
e rst sentence announces an internal criticism: Socrates reason for his legislation, namely unity for the city, will not be achieved through the measures he
describes (cf. Pol II.). e second sentence announces an external criticism: it is
impossible for a city to be fully one, since, as Aristotle will go on to say, whatever
surpasses a certain degree of unity is ipso facto not a city. Hence perfect unity is
not a correct aim for legislation.
Now Aristotle refers to the citys unity as Socrates hypothesis; and he does so
again in chapter II.:

. I take logoi to refer ambiguously to Socrates descriptions of communist measures, and his argument () that those measures will lead to unity by arranging for all citizens to be pleased
and pained by the same things.
. Jowett (Barnes (), p. ) and Newman () vol , p. understand the two sentences the other way around, with the rst indicating that unity is not shown by Socrates to be desirable, and the second that Socrates means towards that end are impossible to implement. Jowett
translates, the principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an institution evidently is
not established by his arguments. Further, as a means to the end which he ascribes to the state, the
scheme, taken literally, is impracticable, and how we are to interpret it is nowhere precisely stated.
Against this, there are no arguments for the goodness of civic unity in the Republic, and Socrates in
fact refers to its goodness as a starting point for discussion ( , Rep ). Also,
the language of the rst sentence is mirrored at the beginning of chapter , where Aristotle gives
his internal criticism.
Reeve () altogether fails to see that two types of criticism are being announced, translating it
is not evident from Socrates arguments why he thinks this legislation is needed. Besides, the end
he says his city-state should have is impossible.

 . ,
.
One must think that the cause of Socrates error is that his hypothesis is not
correct. Both a household and a city must be one in some way, but not in every
way. (Pol II., )
It is easy to see why the label hypothesis is appropriate if we look at the passage
in the Republic to which Aristotle is most likely referring. is is the passage in
which Socrates begins his defense of communism.
, ,
, ,
() ,
; , .
(b.) ; ; .
en isnt the rst step towards agreement to ask ourselves what we say is the
greatest good in designing the citythe good at which the legislator aims in
making the lawsand what is the greatest evil? And isnt the next step to
examine whether the system weve just described ts into the tracks of the
good and not into those of the bad? Absolutely. Is there any greater evil
we can mention for a city than that which tears it apart and makes it many instead of one? Or any greater good than that which binds it together and makes
it one? ere isnt. (Rep V, , translation by Grube/Reeve in Cooper
())
Socrates and his interlocutor Glaucon agree to begin their discussion of the
merits of communism from the premise that the greatest good for a city is whatever unies it, and the greatest evil for a city is whatever destroys its unity. Socrates can then go on to argue that sharing wives, children, and property is best for a
city by arguing that it unies a city more than any alternative arrangement. e
goodness of unity thus functions as an unargued premise for argument, which is
precisely what a hypothesis is.
Aristotles phrasing leaves it ambiguous exactly what he is labeling a hypothesis. It could be the proposition that it is best for the entire city to be as far as possi-

ble one, or it could be the property of being as far as possible one. As were about
to see, he sometimes does clearly refer to a property as a hypothesis.

.. e hypothesis of democracy is freedom

e passage that Bonitz lists rst () as an example of hypothesis

referring to an end, is Aristotles statement at the beginning of Politics VI. that
the hypothesis of democracy is freedom:
(
,
).
e hypothesis of democracy is freedom (for people are accustomed to say
this, that only in this constitution do people share in freedomfor, they say,
this is what every democracy aims at). (Politics VI., -.)
Unlike in the criticism of Plato, here the hypothesis is ascribed to the constitution rather than to the person who designs or legislates the constitution. It is
probably best to understand this ascription as derivative: it is the hypothesis of the
constitution insofar as the constitution was legislated, or is structured as if it had
been legislated, by someone who took freedom as a starting point for his design.
e two things Aristotle says in explanation of his statement that freedom is
the hypothesis of democracy are, rst, that freedom is a distinctive feature of
democracy (or at least, people think it is), and second, that every democracy aims
at freedom (again, at least people think it does). us we can see why Bonitz takes
this passage to indicate that hypothesis means something akin to (dening
characteristic) and (end). But again, there is no need to ascribe a new
meaning to hypothesis: Aristotles line of thought makes good sense if we take
him to be saying that freedom is the premise of democratic design and legislation.
Not that every premise behind a constitutions design must involve something
unique to that constitution: presumably, things such as stability and auence are
among the basic aims of more than one kind of legislator. But the ones worth

mentioning will be at least distinctive, if not unique (in fact, Aristotle probably
does not endorse the claim that freedom is unique to democracy). Second, the
structure of the reasoning involved in designing a constitution is such that the
starting points are pretty much guaranteed to function as aims. When the legislator begins by xing certain features of his constitution, and then designs the rest
of the constitution in accordance with them, he is in eect choosing the remaining features (or at least some of them) for the sake of the ones he xed at the beginning (see pp ).
e hypothesis is said to be a property, freedom, rather than a proposition. We
could take this as a kind of periphrasis, with the hypothesis really being a proposition such as that it is best for the city to be as far as possible free, or that the city
must be free. But it isnt necessary to do that, since, as weve seen (section .),
Aristotle allows for non-propositional hypotheses.

.. e tyrants hypotheses

e second passage cited by Bonitz (-) regards the purposes of tyrants.

,
, , ,
.

. is is hard to demonstrate, because it is hard to know what freedom () means in

the present context: is it being used in the same sense as when Aristotle uses it to signify nonslaves in contrast to slaves (e.g., Politics I., ); or as when he refers to the free in contrast to
the wealthy (e.g., Pol IV., : a constitution is a people [i.e., a democracy] when the free
are in charge, and an oligarchy when the wealthy are; but it turns out that the former are many and
the latter few.)? If it is, then Aristotle clearly thinks that there are many free people under non-democratic constitutions. In any case, we should note that Aristotle thinks the typical democratic
understanding of freedom, as doing whatever one wishes, is mistaken (Pol V., -). is
makes it probable that he thinks freedom properly understood is most fully enjoyed under some
non-democratic type of regime.

e purposes of tyrants all refer back to these three terms. For all tyrannical
elements may be referred to these hypotheses: that people not trust each other,
that they have no power, and that they think small. (Pol V., -)
As in the remark about democracy, we nd talk of hypotheses closely associated
with mention of and of purposes (, the three clauses). But
again, the association of these elements does not entail sameness of meaning. As
for the three , I am inclined to take them as terms, in the Analytics sense of
components of propositions. Aristotle has in fact given us three terms in the preceding lines or so: labels for the characteristics that tyrants aim to instill in
their subjects. ese are smallness of soul, mistrust of one another, and powerlessness. Aristotle can now conrm that the purposes of tyrants all refer back to one
or another of these three terms by claiming that every tyrannical element can be
referred to one or another hypothesis built from them.
Exactly what the three hypotheses are, and just how they are related to the
clauses, is dicult to determine. ere seem to be two possible construals of
the syntax of the clauses: they may either be nal clauses or object clauses
(Goodwin (), ; see for subjunctive in object clauses). Object
clauses usually follow verbs that signify striving, planning, or bringing something
about, and can stand in apposition to an object accusative such as
(Goodwin (), p. ). Final clauses may express the end or purpose of the action of any verb; they would stand in apposition to a phrase such as ,
for the sake of this, rather than a bare , this.
I think it is better to take the clauses as object clauses, and ll out Aristotles
somewhat elliptic sentence by understanding in front of each :
,
[ ,] , [ ,] , [ ,] .

, ; , ; , .

For all tyrannical elements may be referred to these hypotheses: some to this
that people not trust each other, some to this that they have no power, and
some to this that they think small.
us each (this) has (hypotheses) as its antecedent, and so
each object clause, being in apposition to a , expresses the content of one of
the three hypotheses. I prefer this interpretation largely because it feels better to
let , these hypotheses, refer cataphorically ahead to the
subsequent three phrases, rather than anaphorically back to the mention of three
.
e passage is not straightforward, but in any event, whatever exactly the hypotheses are, it seems unproblematic to maintain that Aristotle refers to them as
hypotheses because they are laid down as starting points for the tyrants thought
and action, and not because they are goals or specications of goals.
Later in the chapter, Aristotle describes an alternative way to ensure the
longevity of a tyranny, almost opposite to the method we have just seen. Again
he uses the term hypothesis, but I think in a signicantly dierent way.
, ,
, ,
. .

. If instead we take the clauses as nal clauses, then I think it is best to construe
and as standing in apposition to , and to supply a participle such as
. us:
,
[] , ,
.
For all tyrannical elements may be referred to these hypotheses, some having
been done in order that people not trust each other, some in order that they have
no power, some in order that they think small. (Pol V., a-)
On this construal, we are not told explicitly what the hypotheses are. Our choices seem to be either
to supply our own (for example: they must not trust each other, they must have no power, they
must think small), or to suppose that is simply picking up from a line before,
and that Aristotle is referring to exactly the same things (in my view, the terms smallness of soul,
mistrust, and powerlessness).

 ,
.
Just as one way of destroying a kingship is to make its rule more tyrannical, so
a way to preserve tyranny is by making it more king-like, guarding just one
thing: power, i.e., that he rule not only those who are willing but also those
who are not willing (for if this goes, being a tyrant goes). But while this, like a
hypothesis, must remain, he must either do or seem to do other things, playing well the part of a king. (Politics V., .)
is time the hypothesis (or, that which must remain like a hypothesis) is not
presented as a premise or origin of everything else the tyrant does; to the contrary,
it appears to serve as a check and limit on the tyrants actions, which in themselves
tend in an opposed direction. Indeed, even in its relation to the constitutional
form of tyranny, the hypothesisthe power to rule both willing and unwilling
subjectslooks more like a conclusion than a premise. Aristotle says, if this goes,
being a tyrant goes, which evokes the rule that if a conclusion doesnt hold then
the premise doesnt hold: being a tyrant ( ) stands in the place of
premise, and power stands in the place of conclusion.
I would suggest that Aristotle is invoking a dierent context for the use of hypothesis than those in which hypotheses function as premises. Consider instead
his descriptions of dialectical confrontations in which the respondent is said to
uphold (), and the questioner to attack (), a hypothesis. Aristotles tyrant is doing something like playing the role of respondent. In taking up the
king-like behaviors and pretenses that Aristotle recommends, he is not positively
arguing or working for power; rather, he is making what concessions are required
while doing his utmost to avoid compromising his power. Aristotle says that the

. e.g., Physics II., -: .

. Topics ., -: .
e same hypotheses are dicult to attack as are easy to uphold. Topics ., :
. One should take care not to uphold an implausible hypothesis.

tyrant must guard, , this power; this too is a word that comes up in dialectical contexts.

.. Criticizing the hypothesis of Spartas legislator

,
, . , .
One could also criticize the hypothesis of [Spartas] lawgiver in the following
way (this is precisely what Plato has criticized in the Laws): for the entire system of laws is oriented towards a part of virtue, namely military virtue, since it
is useful for conquering. Well then, they were preserved while they were waging war, but began to perish once they were in power, because they didnt
know how to be at leisure, not having practiced any other kind of training
more elevated than that for war. (Politics II., .)
Based on the corresponding passages in Platos Laws, it appears that the hypothesis Aristotle has in mind is something to the eect that a city is well-governed if
and only if it is well-prepared to be victorious in war ( , ,
, ). It is a consequence of making this his premise that the lawgiver arranges his laws so as to promote military virtue to the neglect of other
virtues. e hypothesis is about the importance of military conquest, and the criticism of that hypothesis is that it results in cultivating a mere part of human
virtue.
is passage from Laws I indicates the nature of the hypothesis:
{.} , ,
. ;
{.} .

. NE ., : , . No
one would call someone who lived like this happy, unless he were guarding a thesis.

{.} , , ;
A: But explain this point to me rather more precisely: the denition
you gave of a well-run state seems to me to demand that its organization and
administration should be such as to ensure victory in war over other states.
Correct?
C: Of course, and I think our companion supports my denition.
M: My dear sir, what other answer could one possibly make, if one is a
Spartan? (Plato, Laws , translation by Saunders in Cooper ().)
is passage from Laws III shows that the over-narrow focus on the military
part of virtue is seen as a consequence of the hypothesis. (See also Laws IV,
.)
{.} , ,
, .
A: And I remind you againto recollect the beginning of our discussionof what you two recommended: you said that the good legislator should
construct his entire legal code with a view to war; for my part, I maintained
that this was to order him to establish his laws with an eye on only one virtue
out of the four. (Plato, Laws , tr. Saunders.)

.. Dont bring together everything proper to the hypothesis

, ,
.
ose who establish constitutions try to bring together every single element
that is proper to the hypothesis, but it is a mistake to do this, as we said earlier
in our discussion about how constitutions are destroyed and preserved. (Politics VI., -.)
To understand this remark, it is important to bear in mind that Aristotle oers it
in the context of a discussion of democracy, which he regards as a deviant () form of constitution. A deviant constitution, such as democracy or oli-

garchy, will be functional and stable only if it is moderate: for many democraticseeming elements destroy democracies, and many oligarchic-seeming elements
destroy oligarchies. It is like a hooked or snub nose, which may be beautiful so
long as it deviates only moderately from the straight, but as the curvature becomes more extreme, the nose will rst become unseemly (lose its ), and
nally stop appearing to be a nose at all (-). Likewise, a constitution can
be adequate if it is somewhat democratic or oligarchic, but if it goes too far it will
get worse, and nally stop being a constitution.
erefore, if you are establishing a constitution based on the hypothesis of
freedom (or the hypothesis that it is best for the city to be maximally free), you
would do well not to follow out every consequence of that hypothesis, and not to
institute every possible measure that would promote freedom. Otherwise your
eorts are likely to be self-defeating (you will not produce a constitution at all, but
something analogous to the body part too distorted to qualify as a nose), and at
best you will produce a very bad constitution.

.. External and internal evaluation

,
, ,
,
.
Concerning the constitution of the Spartans and of Crete, and perhaps the
other constitutions too, there are two things to inquire: rst, whether anything
has been legislated well or not well in comparison to the best arrangement;
second, whether anything has been legislated contrary to the hypothesis and
character of the constitution intended. (Politics II., .)

. Politics ., -.
.

Aristotle announces two sorts of criticism to which a constitution may be subject.

One is external, or absolute, and consists in seeing to what extent the constitution
achieves or fails to achieve an unqualiedly optimal arrangement of laws, oces,
and courts. e other is internal, and consists in seeing to what extent the elements of the constitution harmonize with or contradict the hypothesis and character () of the constitution envisaged by its legislators. I do not know what
distinction (if any) Aristotle has in mind between a constitutions hypothesis and
its character.
Of the criticisms that Aristotle proceeds to make, it is not always obvious
which are external and which internal. However, we have seen a clear case of external criticism in section ..: the Spartan constitution is premised upon an incorrect hypothesis, namely that the city is well-governed if and only if it is well
prepared to conquer in war. ere are two places in which Aristotle clearly marks
an internal criticism, by saying that some measure is detrimental specically relative to a choice or intention of the legislator. First, the women:
.
, ,
.
Further, the license of their women is detrimental both to the purpose of the
constitution and to the happiness of the city. For though the legislator
wants the entire city to be tough, he displays his wish in relation to men,
whereas he has completely neglected the women. (Politics II., ,
.)
Women are not adequately trained and disciplined, and this is not just bad in
itself, but undermines the aims and values to which Sparta herself is committed. If
there is a dierence between hypothesis and character, I would venture that this
case involves the constitutions hypothesis: the hypothesis (that the city should be
primed for victory in war) requires that the citizens be tough, and yet the laws allow half of the population to be undisciplined and frivolous.

Second, the meals:

. , ,
,
.
,
.
Nor were things legislated well concerning the common messes called phiditia
by the person who rst set them up. ey should have been nanced from
common funds, as in Crete. Among the Spartans, each person must contribute, even though some are very poor and cannot lay out this expense, with
the result that the lawgiver achieves the opposite of his purpose. For he wants
the arrangement of the common messes to be democratic, but they turn out
not at all democratic when they are legislated in this way. (Politics II.,
.)
Requiring every participant in the common meals to contribute funds for
them undermines the democratic intent behind instituting such meals in the rst
place. Of course the Spartan constitution as a whole was not meant to be democratic, but it was meant to incorporate democratic as well as oligarchic elements.
By botching one of its democratic elements, the legislator failed to create or maintain the desired balance of democracy and oligarchy.

.. Defects in Carthages constitution

,
.
Most of the things one could criticize on account of its deviations [from the
best] turn out to be common to all the constitutions we have discussed. Of the
things to criticize in relation to the hypothesis of aristocracy and polity, some
incline more towards the people, some towards oligarchy. (Politics II.,
.)

Aristotle distinguishes, in similar terms to what we saw above (..), between external and internal criticism. From an external standpoint, we can simply note all
errors and defects. On the other hand, we can criticize a constitution based on
values internal to it, by pointing out ways in which its arrangements conict with
the basic premise from which it was designed. at premise, as weve seen, is referred to as the hypothesis of the constitution in question.

.. Education of reason and habit (missing the best hypothesis)

. ,
.
It remains to consider whether children should be educated rst by reason or
by habits. For these must harmonize with each other in the best way: for it is
possible for reason completely to miss the best hypothesis, and for someone to
be similarly led by his habits. (Politics VII., .)
As we know from the Nicomachean Ethics, complete human virtue requires both
an excellent habituated condition of the non-rational part of the soul and an excellent condition of the reasoning faculty. Here Aristotle briey (and somewhat
cryptically) alludes to one of the reasons why both are needed. If ones rational
faculty has not been properly educated, then he is liable to reason from less than
optimal premises about what to do. (Given Aristotles model of practical reasoning (cf. pp ), these will be premises about what ends should be realized.
Perhaps, as Reeve (), p. thinks, Aristotle has in mind a single premise
about the ultimate end, i.e., a view about what happiness is; but it seems just as
likely that he envisages an ethical agent making a series of judgments from day to
day as to what more immediate ends should be pursued in the particular situa. I follow Newman () ad loc. in understanding to refer to deviations from the
best arrangement (as at Pol ., ), rather than deviations from the three correct forms of
constitutions (tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity).

tions in which he nds himself.) If his habits are no good, then no matter how
well he reasons, his behavior will be just as bad as if he had no understanding.

So far, we have seen the word hypothesis used in Aristotle to refer to various
sorts of things that may be assumed or posited. One such sort of thing is a goal,
and Aristotle occasionally refers to goals as hypotheses. However, we have seen no
reason to think that the word hypothesis means anything dierent when referring to goals than when it refers to other assumed or posited things, such as
premises in arguments. In both cases, it just means something like assumption.
Now I will turn to the prepositional phrase , hypothetically or
from a hypothesis. Given what hypothesis means in isolation, we should expect this prepositional phrase to mean something like on an assumption. On the
other hand, if hypothetically necessary means necessary for the achievement of
an end, then hypothetically must be capable of meaning something like relative
to an end. Apart from the disputed passages about necessity, are there any places
where hypothetically appears to have an end-related meaning?

.. Syllogisms

e most numerous use of hypothetically is in the Prior Analytics, in

connection with so-called hypothetical syllogisms. ese are syllogisms such that
they or their conclusions are proven, argued, completed, or agreed to from a hypothesis. Aristotle oen refers to them as , syllo-

. See chapter ., note on page for references.

gisms from a hypothesis; I think we should understand a verb in participle form

such as or , proven or argued.
Obviously, from a hypothesis has nothing to do with ends in this connection. It just means something like based on an assumption, the assumption being
perhaps that whatever entails something false is false, or that whatever is true of
one is true of all the members of a given class.

.. Resulting

It makes no dierence that the impossibility resulted from a hypothesis (

); for the hypothesis we took was possible, and when something possible is assumed, nothing impossible should result from it (Physics VII.,
). Here Aristotle is proving the impossibility of one proposition, p, by assuming the truth of a second proposition, q, which is known to be possible, and
showing that p & q entails something impossible. e method is described at Topics VII., -:
Examine not only whether something impossible follows immediately from
the thesis, but also whether it is possible for it to obtain from a hypothesis (
), as it does for those who say that being empty is the same as being
full of air. Clearly, if the air goes out, the thing will be not less but more empty:
so assuming something, whether true or false (it makes no dierence), the one
is removed and the other is not. Hence they are not the same.

. e terminology is introduced at Prior Analytics ., -, in the following words: It is necessary that every demonstration and every deduction should prove []
either that something belongs or that it does not, and this either universally or in part, and further
either probatively or hypothetically. Here hypothetically modies prove.
. See section ...
.
, .
. ,
,
, , .
( )
, . .

In these passages again it is obvious that the meaning of from a hypothesis

has nothing to do with ends. Aristotle is simply talking about one thing being entailed by another.

.. Knowing

In two passages in the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle speaks of knowing something (eidenai, epistasthai) from a hypothesis. In one, Aristotle rehearses an argument (which he rejects) that there is no knowledge; in the other, he argues (in his
own voice) that there are no innite chains of predication in demonstrative science. Both arguments involve considering the case in which we prove something, p, from premises that we do not know to be true. Aristotle says that such a
proof does not yield knowledge of p without qualication, but only knowledge of
p from some things or from a hypothesis ( , ; , ,
, ).
ough it isnt clear precisely how knowledge from a hypothesis should be analyzed, the general idea is clear enough: it consists, roughly, in knowing (without
qualication) the truth of a conditional, i.e., that if one thing (the hypothesis) obtains, then another thing (the conclusion) obtains. e hypothesis in question,
then, is a premise or conjunction of premises. Grasping a proof of something, p,
from this premise or these premises, but not knowing that the premises themselves are true, one knows p merely from a hypothesis (assuming, of course, that
one does not know p in some other, independent way).
As before, it is obvious that the meaning of from a hypothesis has nothing to
do with ends.

. Posterior Analytics ., -; ., -.
. According to Barnes (), p. , Aristotles phrase is ambiguous between if is the case,
then a knows that P and a knows that if is the case then P. e latter is favoured by the context
of the argument, and by Aristotles few words on the hypothetical syllogism . But probably Aristotle has not seen the distinction.

.. Wishing
And he will wish good things [to his friend]: simply those that are good simply, and, for those that are good for that man, from a hypothesis.
In the course of his discussion of friendship in Eudemian Ethics book VII, Aristotle considers the ways in which friendship is possible between a decent man and a
bad man. As throughout the treatise, the text here is quite damaged and it isnt
certain what Aristotle wrote. However, the particular clause Ive quoted seems alright. Aristotle is distinguishing two ways in which the decent man will wish his
not-so-virtuous friend well, based on a distinction he made earlier, in VII.,
-, between two classes of good things (and, along the same lines, two
classes of pleasant things): those that are simply good, or good full stop, and those
that are good for someone but not good simply. To explain the dierence, he says
that what is advantageous to a healthy body is simply good for a body, whereas
what is advantageous only to a sick body, such as drugs or incisions, is not simply
good for a body. He goes on to say, likewise in the case of soul (): thus he
holds, quite generally, that what is good for a man in good condition, i.e., a virtuous and healthy man, is simply good, while what is good only for a man in bad
condition is not simply good. It seems clear that the notion of good for here
means what truly benets or improves the person, or what furthers his achievement of truly good endswhether or not he himself wants it or regards it as good,
and whether or not it furthers the achievement of any ends he wishes to achieve.

. EE ., -. , [mss: ],
.
. See also EE VII., ; Pol VII., -; MM II....
. ree reasons: Aristotle has another, separate distinction between what is good and what appears good; my interpretation ts the medical example; Aristotle says (-) that the decent
man is useful to the bad one relative to natural choice as opposed to actually obtaining choice.

ings that are good for someone in bad condition are a sort of corrective to a
bad situation.
Now, in friendship between good men, there is no dierence between what is
good for the friend and what is good simply. But if your friend is not altogether
virtuous, the two sorts of good will come apart. Aristotle says that there is a qualication to the way in which you will wish your friend the rst kind of good: you
will wish him these not simply but from a hypothesis. What is the nature of this
qualication?
Someone looking for an end-related meaning of hypothetically might propose that wishing something hypothetically means wishing it for the sake of something else, as opposed to wishing it for its own sake. In support of this, one could
point to the end of the sentence whose beginning I quoted above: [he will wish
for] these things [i.e. those that are good only for the friend] for the sake of things
that are good simply, just like drinking medicine: he doesnt wish it, but wishes it
for the sake of such-and-such. e thought would be that there is a distinction
between wishing for something specically as a means, and wishing for it, if not
necessarily as an ultimate end, at least not as a means to anything in particular.
ings that are simply good, such as health and riches, are wished for in the second way, i.e., simply, whereas things that are good only for someone in bad condition are always wished for hypothetically, i.e., as means to some denite simply
good thing. On this proposed reading, the simply good thing would be the hypothesis relative to which the good-for-him thing is wished.
On the other hand, we could understand the qualication in a dierent way,
one more in line with the uses of hypothesis we have seen before. Namely, we
could understand wishing something hypothetically as wishing it conditionally:
wishing it if , or given that . e thing wished for is only desirable because

. EE VII., -. <> [mss. ] , {}

<>, .

some undesirable condition now obtains, and so one doesnt wish simply for the
medicine, or the punishment, or whatever, because one would rather that the condition making it desirable didnt obtain. Only holding xed that so-and-so is in
such-and-such bad condition, do you wish for the thing in question.
I dont know exactly how the notion of wishing something if q, or wishing
something given that q, should be spelled out, but it is evidently parallel to that of
knowing something hypothetically. I suggested that knowing q hypothetically
might consist in knowing, for some p, that if p then q, while knowing neither p
nor q. Wishing that q hypothetically could consist in wishing, for some p, that if p
then q, but wishing neither that p nor that q. (I wish that if his leg is gangrenous
then it is amputated, but I dont wish that his leg is gangrenous or that his leg is
amputated.)
It is worth making a comparison to Socrates argument in Platos Gorgias, c
., that tyrants and orators do not do what they wish. e argument opens with
the claim that if someone does a for the sake of b, then he wishes b, not a. Examples in the place of a are drinking medicines and sailing; examples in the place
of b are health and wealth. us the sorts of things that Aristotle will call simply
goodhealth and wealthare treated in the Gorgias as things wished for their
own sake, or at any rate, things not wished for the sake of something else.
Socrates goes on to introduce a partition of all things into those that are good,
those that are bad, and those that are in between. ings in between are ones that
sometimes partake of the good, sometimes of the bad, and sometimes of neither.
Having secured an agreement that in-between things are always done for the sake
of good things, or for the sake of the good, he infers:
en we do not wish to kill, or exile people from cities, or conscate goods,
simply just like that ( ), but rather if these things are benecial we
. Sailing is described as a dicult and dangerous undertaking, . Cf Dodds (), p.
ad : e Greeks did not go on pleasure cruises, or take sea voyages for their health; sailing was still a dangerous business, as Demosthenes speeches on bottomry suciently show, and
oen highly uncomfortable; Hesiod thought it folly.

wish to do them, and if they are harmful we do not wish to do them. For we
wish good things, as you agree, not things that are neither good nor bad, nor
things that are bad.
It isnt obvious that this is the right conclusion to draw, but that is an issue we
neednt address here. What I want to take home is: (a) Socrates distinction between what is good and what is in between, but partakes of the good in a given situation, seems to match Aristotles distinction between what is simply good and
what is not simply good but good for someone. (b) Socrates uses the adverb simply () to modify wish (), as does Aristotle. (c) What simply
means in the Gorgias is without distinction, and the needed distinction is expressed with if.
Something similar is going on in EE as in the Gorgias, and if EE is an early
work we might expect it to formulate things in Academic ways. In the Gorgias,
as in the EE passage, there is a distinction between wishing something for the sake
of something else and wishing something in its own right. But what is contrasted
to wishing something simply is wishing it if something is the case, not wishing it for
the sake of something else. So understanding from a hypothesis in EE to mean
conditionally or on an assumption makes Aristotles formulation run parallel to
Platos. Combined with the fact that this reading best matches Aristotles use of the
phrase elsewhere, this leaves us with good reason to accept the reading.

.. Employment of virtue
( , )
,
. ,
<> , , ( -

. Gorgias c -, my translation.
. It does so in other respects, such as its use of the Academic term (employment) in
place of the more typically Peripatetic (activity or actuality).

 ), .
We say (and we have dened it also in the Ethics, if there is any help in what
we said there) that it (sc. happiness) is a complete exercise and employment of
virtue, and this not hypothetically but simply. I use hypothetically of things
that are necessary, and simply of what is nely done. For example, in the
case of just actions, just retributions and punishments are done from virtue,
but they are necessary, and they possess the ne in a necessary way: it is more
choiceworthy if neither the man nor the city has any need of such things. Just
actions done for honors and abundance, on the other hand, are supremely ne
without qualication.
Here we have a distinction similar to what we saw in the case of wishing. Among
instances of the complete exercise and employment of virtue, some are merely
necessary, and it would be preferable to have no need of them, whereas others are
noble and ne. An instance of the necessary kind, such as an act of just retribution or punishment, is said to be hypothetically, not simply, a complete employment of virtue.
Why is it appropriate for Aristotle to cast his distinction in terms of the hypothetical? He seems to be working with the following rule: if something is virtuous
under desirable circumstances, you may say that it is virtuous, full stop; if something is virtuous only under undesirable circumstances, you must be more specic, and say that it is virtuous if these circumstances obtain. We have seen this
sort of rule for good and wish. But in those two cases, it was clearer why such a
rule would apply. Undesirable circumstances are not good and they are not normally wished for. Something is not fully good if it is good only under not-good
circumstances, and something is not fully wished for if it is wished for only under
unwished-for circumstances. us there is an obvious distinction between a primary and a secondary degree of goodness and wish, and the rule is in place to

. Politics VII., -.
. In the rst case, x is good but it would be better on the whole if x were not good; in the second case, x is wished for but it is also wished that circumstances obtain under which x would not
be wished for.

mark the secondary cases. Moving to the case of virtue, we might say, in parallel
to the cases of goodness and wish, that if an action is virtuous only in response to
some defect of virtue in the agent, then it is not fully virtuous. However, the parallel breaks down in that nding oneself in undesirable circumstances does not entail any lack of virtue, as it does entail a lack of goodness and wish. Hence it is not
obvious that a virtuous response to undesirable circumstances is anything less
than a full employment of virtue. (In fact, the examples given of virtuous action
nowadays usually are responses to undesirable situations: alleviating suering,
righting wrongs, preventing disasters, and so forth.) Assuming that no type of action is virtuous under every circumstance, how then can we discriminate between those that are hypothetically and those that are simply exercises of virtue?
I think the trick is to appeal to the teleological structure that virtues have
and which they share with some other kinds of state. Consider a cra such as
medicine. ere is one employment that the cra is for: namely, making healthy.
is is the function of medicine, and it is what we should call the employment of
medicine, full stop. But there is another way of employing the cra of medicine:
namely, teaching it to someone else. is is, I believe, an exercise of the cra per
se, but it is a secondary one. One way to see this is to note that the value of
teaching the cra is derivative from the value of using it to make someone healthy.
Teaching medicine is a mere means to its being practiced in the primary way by
the student.
Now consider virtue. Again, there is one employment that the virtue is for;
this will be some sort of ne action. is is the function of the virtue (in EE lan-

. I am supposing that there is some limited domain of natural action types, so that, for
example, whipping is a type of action whereas whipping someone who has stolen bread, in a city
whose laws are , and where the thief s social status is is not a type of action.
. Phys III., -: , . Teaching is
an activity of that which teaches, in the learner. Meta A., -:
[sc. ] . at which teaches (that which is ) is
knowledge. Putting the two passages together, it follows that teaching a cra is an activity or employment of the cra.

guage), or the function relative to which the state in question is a virtue, and it is
what we should call the employment of the virtue, full stop. But perhaps there is
another way of employing virtue, analogous to the way we employ a cra in teaching it. If we take the analogy between virtue and cra seriously, we might expect
this second kind of employment to be a matter of imparting virtue to others. In
fact this isapproximatelythe function of punishment (more precisely, I suppose its function is to lessen vice.) Im not sure what to say about retribution (; cf. Rhet ., -). But at any rate it seems plausible that there is a
class of actions required by virtue under certain circumstances, even though they
are not themselves the actions that virtue is for. Let us call the actions in this class
secondary employments of virtue, and the others primary employments of virtue.
Virtue and cra alike have primary and secondary employments. Where
virtue diers from cra is that virtue itself dictates which sort of employment is
appropriate. is is because virtue is employed not only in carrying out a course of
action, but also in choosing a course of action. In contrast, cra is exercised only
in the carrying out; the choice results from practical, not productive, reasoning.
is is why a given type of action may be virtuous if one set of circumstances obtains, but not virtuous if another set of circumstances obtains; whereas a given
type of action will be cra-like independent of circumstances (a bad decision to
build a house is no failure in house-building, and does not detract from the degree to which the builder manifests his cra). is makes it possible to mark secondary employments of virtue as virtuous if , or virtuous on a hypothesis.

.. Decent
, , ,
.
, .

 ,
.
To be such that one would be ashamed if one should do a certain thing, and to
think oneself decent because of this, is strange: for shame is set over voluntary
actions, and a decent person will never do bad things voluntarily. Shame
would be decent from a hypothesis: if he should do such-and-such, he would
be ashamed. But this is not how things are with virtues. If shamelessness, doing shameful things without being ashamed, is bad, this does not mean that if
one who does such things does feel ashamed, it is decent. (NE IV.,
-.)
e broad lesson of NE IV. is that shame is not a virtue. e rst reason is simply
that shame is an aection () rather than a state (). But Aristotle also considers the disposition to feel shame. Such a disposition is tting in young people,
he says, because it is to be expected that the strength of their passions will drive
them towards error, and a sense of shame acts as a check. In adults, however, there
is nothing decent or praiseworthy in a disposition to feel shame, because grown
up people should have no tendency to do anything shameful in the rst place. It is
strange and absurd to think oneself decent on the grounds that one would be
ashamed if one should do something shameful.
Shame would be decent from a hypothesis: if he should do such-and-such, he
would be ashamed. But this is not how things are with virtues ().
e force of the potential optative ( , would be or, perhaps better,
could be) is not entirely clear. Aristotle may be using it to express a consequence
of the proposal he is discussing, namely that a person can qualify as decent on the
grounds that he would be ashamed if he did something disgraceful. Or he may
himself be conceding the point (at least for the sake of argument) that shame is
decent on a hypothesis, only to point out that this does not qualify the disposition
to shame for the status of virtue. Virtues are primarily exercised in ways that are
not merely good given some assumption, but that are admirable and ne without
qualication (see section ..).

As for what it means to say that shame is decent on a hypothesis, it appears to

be this: it is a decent thing in a person that if he should do such-and-such, he
would be ashamed. at he does such-and-such is the hypothesis. Note that decency takes wide scope over the conditional, as necessity does in hypothetical necessity. (Aristotle is not saying that if someone does such-and-such, then it is decent to
be ashamed: indeed, he denies this a few lines down.) It would perhaps be more
accurate to say that hypothetical shame is decent, instead of saying that shame is
hypothetically decent, just as it would be more accurate to say that if p then q is
necessary instead of saying that q is necessary on the hypothesis that p. However, I
dont think there is much danger of misunderstanding.

.. Impossible, possible, false, and true

.

( , , ,
, ), . .
. . ()
Let us begin from this: the impossible and the false do not signify the same.
Now there is, on the one hand, what is impossible, possible, false or true on an
assumption (I mean, for example, it is impossible for the triangle to have two
right angles if such-and-such, or the diagonal is commensurate if so-and-so);
but there are also things that are possible, impossible, false and true without
qualication. For something to be false without qualication and for it to be
impossible without qualication are not at all the same. It is not at all the
same to assume something false and something impossible. Something impossible follows from something impossible. (De Caelo ., -.)
is is the beginning of a passage in which Aristotle purports to prove the following claim:

Necessarily, if something is capable of being and capable of not being, then

there is some maximum time for which it can be and some maximum time
for which it can not be.
Let me indicate the nature of the purported proof by describing its rst stage,
which is an argument that if x always exists, then x is imperishable (i.e., it is impossible for x to cease to exist). e argument relies on the principle that if p entails something impossible, then p is impossible. We consider some x which always exists. We suppose that it ceases to exist. It follows, says Aristotle, that x will
simultaneously exist and not exist. Since this is impossible, our supposition that x
ceases to exist was impossible. erefore, x is not capable of ceasing to exist: it is
imperishable. Since our choice of x was arbitrary, it follows that anything that always exists is imperishable.
e argument is invalid. When we suppose, contrary to fact, that x ceases to
exist at some time, we do not carry into our supposition the fact that x always exists. us our supposition does not have the consequence Aristotle says it has, at
least not given just the premises I have stated. It is unclear whether we can supply
Aristotle with a better argument, and, if so, what further premises we should
attribute to him.
On a straight reading of the passage, Aristotle commits a fallacy that he
should have been in a good position to diagnose and avoid. Until we have either a
good explanation of why Aristotle was susceptible to the fallacy, or an interpretation on which he does not commit it aer all, it will be hard to say anything with
condence about this passage. In particular, it is hard to see what use Aristotle is
making of the distinction between being true, false, possible, or impossible hypo-

. De Caelo ., : ,
,
. If some things are able both to be and not, it is necessary
that there be some determinate greatest time both of being and of not being.
. See section .. for other arguments that use this principle.

thetically and being so simply. If we knew how he was using the distinction, we
could be more sure what the distinction is.
Be that as it may, here is what Aristotle seems to be saying in the paragraph I
have quoted. First he asserts that being false and being impossible are not the
same. en he notes the dierence between being false or impossible (or true or
possible) on an assumption ( ) and without qualication (),
and claries that what he meant by his original claim was that being false without
qualication and being impossible without qualication are not the same. Finally,
he sketches the principle that he will use in the upcoming argument, namely that
a proposition has an impossible consequence only if the proposition itself is
impossible.
If Aristotles main purpose in mentioning the dierence between the hypothetical and the unqualied was to clarify his claim about the dierence between
falsehood and impossibility, then this suggests that being false on a hypothesis and
being impossible on a hypothesis are not dierent, or at least that Aristotle was not
condent that they are dierent. A natural suggestion is that (i) q is false on the
hypothesis that p just in case necessarily, if p then not-q; and also (ii) q is impossible on the hypothesis that p just in case necessarily, if p then not-q.
What is curious is that, on a straight reading of the argument Aristotle proceeds to give, we could diagnose his error precisely as a failure to observe the distinction between being hypothetically impossible and being simply impossible. It
is impossible for x to cease to exist on the hypothesis that x always exists, but, even
if in fact x does always exist, it does not follow that it is simply impossible for x to
cease to exist. ((p q) & p does not entail q. In the present case, p = x always
exists, and q = x does not cease to exist.)
In any case, no one will be tempted to think that on a hypothesis in this passage means relative to an end.

.. Money makes things commensurable

, ,
.
, . ,

.
Currency equalizes things by making them commensurate, like a measure. For
there would be no association without exchange, no exchange without equality, and no equality without commensurability. Now in truth it is impossible
for such dierent things to be made commensurate, but it can be done adequately with a view to need. ere must be some one thing, and this from a
hypothesis. is is why it is called currency. For it is this that makes all things
commensurate: all things are measured by currency. (NE V., -.)
is passage comes from the last of three consecutive discussions of monetary
currency, which Gauthier & Jolif (), p. regard as parallel dras (recensions parallles) as opposed to a series of revisions. e line of thought, which
we also nd at , is as follows. () Community requires exchange. ()
Exchange requires equality [of things exchanged]. () Equality requires commensurability [of the kinds of things exchanged]. At this point, Aristotles treatments
diverge. In both, there is contrast between what is in truth ( ) and
what is merely conventional or approximate. (a) In the earlier lines ()
Aristotle says that in truth everything is measurable by need, whereas by agreement ( ) currency functions as an exchangeable token ()
of need, and hence can measure things as well. (b) In the present passage he says
that in truth, no one thing can measure everything. We can only approximate commensurability, though we can do so adequately with a view to needmeaning either that we can approximate it well enough for our needs, or that we can approxi-

. Gauthier and Jolif divide the passages as follows: ; ; .

. My reading requires locating the boundaries between dras slightly dierently than Gauthier
and Jolif do.

mate it by looking to need. By hypothesis ( ), there is one thing by

which we measure everything, namely currency.
Although the lines of thought are not perfectly parallel at this stage, it does appear that by hypothesis in the one passage plays the same role as by agreement
in the other. In both passages Aristotle goes on to remark that this is why currency has the name it has, , a word etymologically connected to ,
meaning law or custom. (In the earlier passage, Aristotle goes on to explain: because it exists not by nature but by custom () (-). In the later passage
he lets the remark drop without further explanationalthough he signals ()
that he will explain something, what he explains is simply that the one thing he
had been talking about is in fact currency.) By hypothesis, then, seems here to
mean something like due to an act of positing. Currency had to be laid down, stipulated into existence.

.. eorizing

, .
And because of this, it does not belong to the geometer to theorize about what
the opposite, complete, one, existent, same or dierent are, unless from a hypothesis. (Metaphysics ., .)
Aristotle says this aer giving a series of arguments that there is a single science of
being qua being, a science that studies both what it is to be, and the attributes that
apply to beings just insofar as they are, rather than applying to them insofar as
they are this or that kind of thing. e geometer is introduced as an example of a
special scientist. Such a scientist studies some particular kind of beings, and the
attributes that apply to beings insofar as they belong to that particular kindin
this case, insofar as they are gures. Opposition, completeness, unity, being,
sameness and dierence apply to beings just insofar as they are, not insofar as
they belong to this or that particular kind; hence it belongs to the rst philoso

pher, not to the geometer or any other special scientist, to study themunless
from a hypothesis.
What does this last qualication mean? It is dicult to tell, and since the sentence as a whole is a sort of parenthesis, we dont get any help from the context.
Perhaps the simplest way to understand it is: unless we suppose that the geometer is also a rst philosopher. On the hypothesis that he is also a rst philosopher,
it does belong to the geometer to study the opposite, complete, one, existent,
same, and dierent.
ere is another interpretation dating back to Alexander, and followed by
Ross, according to which what Aristotle means is that the geometer takes as hypotheses the accounts of the opposite, complete, one, etc., given by rst philosophy. is is forced. ere is a clear dierence between studying something on a
hypothesis, and using an account of it as a hypothesis in studying other things.
Even granted that Aristotle tends towards over-compression, if he meant to express the second idea he could have written , but uses
them as hypotheses, at a cost of only seven additional letters over , unless on a hypothesis.
Bonitz oers a third proposal, on which means except
insofar as pertains to the object set before himself. His idea is that, since a special science deals with only a limited part of what is, therefore even when it investigates or applies the same notions as those treated in rst philosophy, it will deal
with only a partial understanding of those notionsnamely, an understanding
only of how the notions apply to its special domain of inquiry. is special do-

. Ross claims that his reading is amply conrmed by Meta ., . But what Aristotle
says there is that a special scientist may take as hypothesis an account of the essence of his object of
study, not an account of the opposite, complete, one, existent, same, or dierent. It is anyway hard
to see what sort of hypothesis about the opposite, the complete, and so on could serve as a premise
in demonstrations belonging to a special science.
. eatenus eas inquirunt, quatenus ad rem iis subiectam ( , sive )
pertinent. Bonitz () vol , p. .

main is what the special scientist has set before himself to study, and is thus referred to as his hypothesis.
In any case, I dont think anyone will be tempted to interpret the phrase as
meaning what some think it means in connection with necessity, namely relative
to an end.

.. Asking whether
,
, , , ,
, .
We do not ask whether it is a man or white, unless from a hypothesis and inquiring, for example, whether it was Cleon or Socrates who came (Metaphysics ., )
e hypothesis seems to be that whatever came is not both white and a man. (So
perhaps Cleon is a white horse, and Socrates is a swarthy man.) From a hypothesis, then, clearly means based on an assumption here.

.. Constitution
, , (
, ,
-

. Ross () ad loc says, on the assumption that the person who came must have been either
Cleon or Socrates. Ross seems to view the whether a man or white question as separate from the
whether Cleon or Socrates question, whereas it seems to me that the rst is said to be (given
some background assumptions) a way of getting an answer to the second. Rosss analysis: [W]e
ask whether it is white or black, whether it is white or not white, but not whether it is a man or
white. When we state alternatives between which there is no apparent opposition, as in whether
Cleon came, or Socrates, we imply that they are incompatible (pp -).

 ,
, , ),
.
us it is clear that it belongs to the same science to study both the best constitution, and which constitution is suited to which people, and, third, the
constitution from a hypothesisfor one must be able to study any given constitution, both how it could come into being in the rst place, and, once it exists, how it could be preserved for the longest time. I mean, for example, if
some city turns out neither to be governed by the best constitution (and it is
not supplied with the necessaries for that), nor by the best constitution possible under the circumstances, but by something worse. Besides all these, one
must know which constitution is most suited to all cities. (Politics IV.,
)
e third thing a political scientist should understand, in addition to (i) the best
constitution given the best possible circumstances, and (ii) the best constitution
for any particular city given its actual inhabitants and resources, is (iii) the constitution from a hypothesis ( ). Understanding this last thing is
explained as understanding how to establish and preserve any given constitution
( ). us the third aspect of political science is closely analogous to
what cleverness is in the personal practical domain, namely the ability to do the
things that conduce to any assumed goal ( ), and thus
achieve that goal. We could read the constitution from a hypothesis as being
exactly equivalent to the assumed constitution ( ),
meaning any assumed constitution. Alternatively, we could read hypothesis
not as referring to the direct assumption of a kind of constitution, but rather to
the basic principle or value whose assumption guides the establishment of a given
constitution. For example, a hypothesis might be that it is best for the city to be as
unied as possible, or that freedom should be promoted as much as possible, and so

. NE VI., -:
.

forth. We have seen (section .) that hypothesis refers to this sort of thing oen
in the Politics.

.. Citizen
, ,
, .
Not everyone without whom there would not be a city should be considered a
citizensince even children are not citizens in the same way as men, but the
one are citizens full stop, the others from a hypothesis: they are citizens, but
incomplete ones. (Politics III., -)
e point Aristotle is making in the passage is that manual workers (),
who do not share in the rule of a city, should not be counted as citizens. Our quotation is part of his answer to the worry that if we do not count them as citizens,
there will be no other group in which to place them, since they are not metics or
foreigners. e answer is that there are other classes of people too who are neither
citizens, metics nor foreigners: slaves and freed slaves, rst of all, but also (in a
way) citizens children.
It is not clear what Aristotle has in mind when he says that children are citizens from a hypothesis. is is another case, like the remark about the geometer
in Metaphysics . (section ..), in which the phrase appears in a sort of parenthesis and there is no aid to interpretation from its context. Perhaps he means that
they are called citizens by convention although they are not strictly speaking citizens, similarly to how things are conventionally measured against each other by
currency although they are in truth not commensurable (..). Perhaps he means
that they are such that, if they were of age, then they would be citizens. Perhaps he
means that, on the assumption that incomplete citizens are citizens, the children
of citizens are citizens.

e remark is dicult to interpret on any view about the meaning of from a

hypothesis. At any rate, it surely does not suggest that the phrase means relative
to an end.

Finally, let me turn to the phrase hypothetically necessary ( , or ). is phrase appears prominently in Physics
II., which I will examine in detail in chapter . It also appears twice in Parts of
Animals ., once in On Generation and Corruption ., and once in De Somno
chapter .
Commentators on Physics II. generally assume that hypothetically necessary means something like necessary for the achievement of an end. Here is John
Coopers account of what hypothetical necessity is:
Summarily stated, an organ or feature of a living thing is and is formed by hypothetical necessity if, given the essence of the thing (specied in terms of capacities and functions) and given the natures of the materials available to constitute it, the organ or feature in question is a necessary means to its
constitution.
Bostock expresses a similar idea:
I think it is clear that when Aristotle speaks of necessity from a hypothesis,
the relevant hypothesis always concerns an end or goal, and what is necessitated by this is always taken to be matter. e general form of this type of necessity is If such-and-such an end, goal, or function is to be realized, there must
be matter of such-and-such a kind.
Cooper is the writer who comes closest to explicitly attributing a teleological
meaning to the phrase hypothetically necessary; he talks about what does and

. Cooper (b), p.
. Bostock (), p.

does not count as a hypothetical necessity in Aristotles usage. He says that New
Yorks being north of Princeton, although it is necessary assuming that New York
is north of New Brunswick and New Brunswick is north of Princeton, is not a hypothetical necessity, and that a condition necessary for some outcome does not
occur by hypothetical necessity unless the outcome is a natural or other goal.
Bostock avoids talk of meaning or usage. Still, as we saw, he takes the phrase
hypothetical necessity to refer to a distinct type of necessity, consisting in the existence of some kind of matter being necessary for the realization of a goal.
e ancient commentators are harder to pin down, but emistius and Philoponus at least clearly interpret the opening question of Physics II., whether necessity belongs hypothetically or simply, as presenting a choice between a view on
which antecedent congurations of matter causally necessitate outcomes (simple
necessity), and a view on which aimed-at realizations of form necessitate the
presence and motions of certain matter (hypothetical necessity). However,
Philoponus goes on to say that not only materials required for the realization of
forms, but also conclusions derived from assumptions in mathematics, are hypothetically necessary (.), so he apparently does not think that the phrases
meaning excludes non-teleological cases. Given this, it is unclear how he thinks
the opening of Physics II. can have the meaning he attributes to it.
In chapter I will show how we can give a satisfactory reading of Physics II.
without building any more into the meaning of hypothetically necessary than
the idea of necessity on an assumption. In the remainder of the present chapter, I

. Cooper (b), p. , including n .

. For more examples of this view of hypothetical necessity, see Sauv Meyer (), p. (hypothetical necessity is a kind of necessity [Aristotle] claims is consequent upon natural teleology); Lear (), pp. - (Hypothetical necessity is a necessity which ows backward from the
achieved end to the process directed toward that end or to the structure of the parts that constitute
that end. [H]ypothetical necessity is ultimately the necessity of rationality.) Pavlopoulos
(); Friedman (); Walsh ().

will indicate how the same can be done for Parts of Animals, Generation and Corruption, and De Somno.

.. Parts of Animals .
A ,
, . , , ,
. ,
, ,
.
.
e necessary does not apply in the same way to everything that is natural,
though practically everyone refers their accounts to it without distinguishing
in how many ways the necessary is said. It applies simply to eternal things; it
applies from a hypothesis, just as to artifacts such as a house or anything else
of that kind, so also to all things in generation. It is necessary that such-andsuch matter be present if there will be a house or some other end; and this
must come about or be moved rst, then that, and so on in sequence up to the
end for whose sake each thing comes about and is. Likewise in things that
come into being by nature. ()
B , , . , .
,
.
, , ,
, ( , ), , .
ere are, then, these two causes: that for the sake of which and that which is
necessaryfor many things do happen because it is necessary. But one might
puzzle over what sort of necessity people are talking about when they say necessary. Neither of the two ways [of being necessary] dened in our philosophical works can apply. In things having generation, however, there is the third:
we call nourishment something necessary not according to either of these

ways, but because the thing cannot be without it. is is just like from a hypothesis: just as, since the axe must split, it is necessary for it to be hard, and,
if hard, then of bronze or iron, so too since the body is an instrument (for
each of its parts is for the sake of something, and similarly the whole), therefore it is necessary for it to be thus-and-so and composed from such-andsuch, if that will be. ()
In each of these passages, Aristotle describes a way in which something can be
necessary for the achievement of an end. In the rst passage, he explains how the
presence of this or that matter, and the occurrence of some particular sequence of
changes, may be necessary for the subsequent existence of an artifact or organism
of a given kind. In the second, he explains how certain features of an object and of
its constituents may be necessary for the performance of the objects work. (He
also says that nourishment is necessary in the same or a similar way.) Each of
these things is said to be necessary from a hypothesis, or hypothetically.
It is easy enough to cast the items in question into conditional necessities.
Necessarily, if there will be a house then there is stone. Necessarily, if there will be
a house in this place then a stone is placed here, and aerwards another stone is
placed on top of it. Necessarily, if this object is capable of splitting wood then it is
hard (orsince something must be capable of splitting wood in order to count as
an axenecessarily, if this is an axe then it is hard). Necessarily, if this is hard
then it is made of bronze or iron.
Is there any reason to think that Aristotle means to say more in calling these
things hypothetically necessary than that their existence or occurrence follows
necessarily from one or another assumption? I think not. It is certainly true that
one could say more about the manner in which they are necessary; and indeed
Aristotle does tell us more. But the point of using this particular phrase, I think, is

. By nourishment Aristotle might equally have in mind food or the act of nourishing oneself.
. If we think Aristotle would regard a given individuals being an axe, or its being made of a
certain material, as non-contingent, then we can rephrase our necessities. Necessarily, if there is an
axe here then there is something hard here.

to establish a link between their mode of necessity and the phenomenon, familiar
from domains such as mathematics, of necessary entailment. Aristotle is making
something of an innovation with his teleologically based ascriptions of necessity,
and he is justifying his new way of talking by assimilating it to an uncontroversial
case. eorists will have been familiar with locutions of the form given [premises], it is necessary that [conclusion] (we see this a lot in the Prior Analytics, for
example). If they were in doubt whether Aristotles explanations genuinely invoked necessity, then his logical terminology and comparisons to mathematics
may have convinced them.
is seems to me an adequate account of Aristotles dialectical reasons for employing the phrase hypothetically necessary in the context of arguments favoring teleological invocations of necessity over non-teleological, quasi-mechanistic
ones. We can see how the phrase might have served his cause in advocating for
the use in physics of facts about what is necessary for the achievement of ends,
without having to suppose that the phrases meaning itself involves the notion of
an end.

.. Generation and Corruption .

, , .
, , , .
,
.
erefore, when it is necessary for the later item to be, then the necessity converts, and it is always necessary for the later to come about when the earlier
comes about. Now, if they go on to innity downwards [i.e., towards the future], it will not be simply necessary for any particular later item to come
about, but hypothetically necessary: there will always be another necessity

Physics II., , PA ., .

ahead, on account of which it is necessary for that one to come about. Hence,
if there is no beginning of the innite, there will not be any rst item on account of which it will be necessary that it come about. (GC ., )
In GC ., Aristotle examines a question which he says is raised by something we
observe in cases of continuous change, namely that things occur in sequences
such that one thing always follows another with no element of the sequence being
skipped. e question is whether there is anything that necessarily will be, or
not, but rather everything admits of not coming about. Aristotle goes about his
answer by focusing on cases in which the occurrence of one thing is necessary for
the occurrence of another later thing. He asks which of these cases are such that
necessity converts: that is, calling the earlier item A and the later item B, in
which cases is it true not only that necessarily, if B occurs then A occurs rst, but
also that necessarily, if A occurs then B occurs aerwards. He argues that cases of
conversion are precisely those in which the later item (and hence the earlier one
too) occurs with simple necessity (that is, its occurrence is not just necessary if
but necessary full stop). is conclusion is stated at the beginning of the quoted
passage.
Aristotle goes on to argue that whatever comes about with simple necessity
comes about as part of a cyclical and eternal sequence of changes. e argument
proceeds by elimination: neither innite nor nite linear sequences of changes can
occur with simple necessity, so that leaves only cyclical sequences. In our passage,
he performs the rst step of this argument, purporting to show that no innite
linear sequence of changes occurs with simple necessity. e occurrence of each
element in the sequence is assumed to derive its necessity from the occurrence of
the subsequent element (necessarily, if en+ occurs then en occurs; necessarily, if
en+ occurs then en+ occurs; and so on). If there is no latest element in the se-

. :
,
, , .
It isnt clear to me exactly how the observation leads to the question.

quence, then there is no element in the sequence whose occurrence is primitively

and simply necessary. If there were such an element, its necessity would propagate
back up the chain (since necessarily, if p then q and necessarily p entail necessarily
q). But since there is not, every elements occurrence is conditionally necessary
and no elements occurrence is simply necessary.
As in so many of Aristotles arguments about modality, the reasoning here is
not as precise as we might wish. For present purposes, however, its outline is clear
enough; and it seems clear that we need ascribe no richer meaning to hypothetically necessary than conditionally necessary.

.. De Somno ch.
: .
, ,
, .
Moreover, sleep necessarily belongs to each of the animals. I ascribe this necessity hypothetically, because if there will be an animal possessing its own nature, certain things necessarily must belong to it, and if these belong other
things must belong.
Aristotle has announced a discussion of the causes of sleep, and has reminded his
reader of the four ways of being a cause. He has begun with the nal cause, explaining that sleep is for the sake of the animals preservation, with waking activity (i.e., perception and thought) being in turn the animals end. Sleep contributes
to the preservation of animals because we cannot (at least, not pleasurably) engage in activity continuously and forever (nor, Aristotle must think, for the entire
duration of our lives); we need rest.
Aristotle then goes on to make the remark about necessity I have quoted. It
isnt clear whether this remark forms part of the discussion of the nal cause, or

. Cf. De Caelo ., -, paraphrased in .. above.

whether necessity is intended as a separate cause of sleep. A consideration in favor

of the second view is that the pair of particles , moreover, typically marks a
transition to the next element in a list, and Aristotle will use it three lines down
to initiate his treatment of the moving cause of sleep; this suggests that it marks
the same kind of transition here, to necessity as a separate manner of cause. Ross,
however, takes the remark about necessity to be part of the treatment of the nal
cause. Presumably he takes necessary to mean necessary for: thus sleep is for,
and indeed necessary for, preservation.
But what does Aristotle mean when he calls sleep necessary? On the one hand,
he has just said that rest is necessary and benecial to all things that naturally
move but cannot pleasurably stay in motion continuously and forever. But there
are also two salient appeals to necessity in other parts of the treatise, one in chapter (), and one at the very end, in chapter (). In the rst of
these passages, Aristotle writes:
whatever has a work by nature, when it exceeds the time in which it is capable
of doing something, necessarily becomes incapable. (Emphasis added.)
In consequence, that in an animal whose work is to perceive, if it perceives continuously beyond a certain length of time, will become incapable of perception. is
incapacity, Aristotle suggests, is just what sleep is. (is suggestion will be revised: he does not hold that sleep comes only aer an animal has exhausted its capacity for continuous perception, but that it is caused by a sort of pressure exerted
on the primary sense organ by matter produced in the digestion of food.)
In the second passage, at the end of the work, Aristotle writes:

. It is especially common in lists of arguments or objections; cf. Bonitz Index s.v. , .

. Ross (), p. . e structure of the discussion on Rosss analysis is: (i) nal cause
(); (ii) ecient cause (ch., ); (iii) material cause (within the discussion of
the ecient cause, ); (iv) formal cause ().
. : ,
, .
. He proposesalbeit within the scope of an if clausethat sleep is an incapacity due to excess of waking ( ), .

And [we have said] what sleep is, that it is a seizing of the primary sense organ
such that it cannot be active, taking place on the one hand from necessity,
since there cannot be an animal without those things resulting which produce
it, but also for the sake of preservation, since rest preserves. (Emphasis
added.)
Aristotle seems to be saying that the existence of an animal entails the presence of things that bring about sleep (necessarily, if there is an animal then xi
result, and xi produce sleep). It isnt clear what he has in mind. Perhaps it is that
necessarily, an animal has a primary sense organ on the one hand and the ability
to take nourishment on the other, and in every animal the process of digesting
food results in some kind of incapacitating pressure against the primary sense organ. Or perhaps it is that animals need sleep, and therefore need to have some
structure in place for bringing it about.
Now let us return to the passage we started with. ere seem to be three forms
that Aristotles necessity claim might be taking. () Sleep is necessary for (required
for the sake of) the preservation of animals. () Sleep is necessary in animals because of a general metaphysical principle, namely that no potentiality can be continuously active forever. () e existence of an animal necessitates certain things
which in turn causally necessitate sleep, by way of pressure on the primary sense
organ and so on. Aristotle seems to endorse each of these three claims at some
point in the treatise, and it is hard to tell which one he is referring to in chapter
as a case of hypothetical necessity.

. . ,
, (
), .
I agree with Ross ()s commentary, against Beares translation in Barnes (), on two points.
() In without those things resulting which produce it, it refers to sleep, not to the animal. ()
From necessity and for the sake of preservation are being contrasted, not combined. (Beare
translates, arising from necessity, i.e., for the sake of its conservation. But I have never heard of
the second limb in a construction being epexegetic of the rst.)
. cf. De Somno . , ,
.
Necessarily, when an animal has perception, then it rst takes nourishment and growth.

It would be helpful if we could better understand the relation between () and

(). It seems that () is grounded in ()the reason why sleep is required for the
sake of animals preservation is that a general metaphysical principle precludes us
from being continuously active throughout our lives. In fact, I dont think that the
consideration under () necessitates sleep strictly speaking: an animals primary
sense organ might be incapacitated in some other way (not every incapacity of
perception is sleep, ) when it remains active for too long at a stretch. But
then there might be signicant advantages in switching o the perceptual capacity through sleep before it reaches the maximum duration of activity: for
example, there will be some power le for use in case of emergency. ese advantages might ground a genuine necessity of the kind claimed in (): necessarily, if
an animal is suited to survive a complete lifetime, then it sleeps.
Claim () ts the structure of the passage most closely, since Aristotles phrasing indicates a syllogism with three terms: if there will be an animal possessing
its own nature (C), certain things (B) necessarily must belong to it, and if these
(B) belong other things (A) must belong. C = animal possessing its own nature
(i.e., not incomplete?, ); B = primary sense organ and ability to take nourishment; A = sleep. e syllogism has the form Barbara.
In any event, hypothetically necessary is very naturally understood here as
meaning necessary on an assumption.

ere remains just one passage, which is the subject of chapter .

See section . for the genuine necessity of these sorts of claims.

CHAPTER READING PHYSICS II.

In this chapter I will engage in a detailed reading of the rst half of Physics II.,
from until . One task remains from chapter , namely to show that in
the present passage, hypothetically necessary can be understood to mean no
more than conditionally necessary. But I will be occupied with interpreting the argument of the passage as a whole, trying to get a clear view of how Aristotle formulates the anti-teleological view of nature that he opposes, where he locates his
disagreement with that view, and what tacit principles he may be relying on in setting out his position.

Aristotle opens this chapter with the question,

;
Does necessity apply hypothetically or without qualication? (-)
ere are a number of questions to ask about the language and content of Aristotles question. First, is he asking about necessity quite generally, or is his attention
conned to some restricted domain? e answer to this, clearly, is that he is asking only about necessity in nature. He is turning to the second of two questions
which he promised to discuss at the beginning of II., and which he there
phrased, concerning necessity, how do things stand in the case of natural items?
( , -.) A second issue is that
the Greek leaves it uncertain whether Aristotle intends the two alternatives in his
question to exclude one another: one could translate either hypothetically or also
without qualication, or, as I did, hypothetically or [rather/in fact] without qualication. Obviously I prefer the second; I will explain why in section ... ird,

the sentence exhibits a well-known type of ambiguity pertaining to phrases of the

form the <adjective> or the <adverb>. What I translated necessity could also
be rendered that which is necessary. Fortunately, Aristotles question is the same
in either case, since the most natural way of interpreting the sentence on the second option is, Is that which is necessary hypothetically such (i.e., hypothetically
necessary), or is it such without qualication? To say that x is hypothetically necessary, and to say that necessity applies hypothetically to x, come to the same
thing.
But the most important issue is, what are the two alternatives presented in
Aristotles question: what does he mean here by hypothetically necessary and
necessary without qualication?
Consider the structure of the discussion which Aristotle introduces with this
question. e passage will run like this:
A

Does necessity apply hypothetically or without qualication?

People nowadays think that necessity applies in way X.

But theyre wrong, really necessity applies in way Y.

Necessity applies hypothetically, not as an end ( ).

Being necessary in way X will be described as a matter of consisting in, or resulting from, the motions that simple stus such as wood and stone naturally engage
in: going up, going down, etc. (see section ). Being necessary in way Y, on the
other hand, consists in being required for the achievement of an end, such as the
existence of a thinge.g., an axor the performance of a things functione.g.,
splitting wood.
One naturally wants the two alternatives in Aristotles opening either/or question to match up with the two alternatives he is about to endorse and reject (respectively). Hence one naturally supposes that, on Aristotles usage, to consist in
or result from the natural motions of simple stus is to be necessary without qualication, while to be hypothetically necessary is to be required for the achieve-

ment of an end. is is indeed what most or all commentators have thought.

ey take hypothetically necessary to mean Aristotles preferred, teleological
way of being necessarysomething like necessary for the achievement of an end
and, in most cases, they take necessary without qualication to mean the materialists non-teleological way of being necessarysomething like necessarily
resulting from antecedent material conditions. (An exception to the second rule is
John Cooper, and perhaps Simplicius as well. Cooper avoids making unqualied
necessity mean materialist necessity by proposing that Aristotles question is already conned to this sort of necessity: the question is whether materialist necessity applies without qualication to things in nature, or whether it only applies
hypothetically.)
I do not believe these two phrases can have the meanings commentators
standardly attribute to them.
First of all, I have argued at length in chapter that hypothetically ( ) simply means on an assumption, and hypothetically necessary simply
means necessary on an assumption (in other words, conditionally necessary). I can
nd no good reason to think that it refers specically to assumptions of the
achievement of goals, rather than to assumptions in general.
Second, the word I have been translating without qualication, , typically has a similar force to that of full stop or sans phrase in English. It may
yield reference either to the primary, fullest instance of what one is talking about
(no exceptions or qualications are to be added), or to its broadest, most general

. emistius ad loc; Philoponus ad loc; judging from a quotation in Simplicius, Alexander at

least shared the view about unqualied necessity (CAG ..-); Ross () ad loc; etc.
. [Aristotle] is asking whether in necessitating natural outcomes matter is to be thought of as
doing so on a hypothesis, namely, given that some natural goal is to be produced, or simply on its
own. Cooper (b), p. . Emphasis original.
. At Topics II., -, Aristotle says that what is ne (or base ) is what you
will call ne (or the opposite) without adding anything ( ). Similarly, in
Nicomachean Ethics VII.-, Aristotle contrasts calling someone incontinent and calling
him incontinent with the addition of a qualifying phrase ( , ) such
as in respect of honor. , , .

sphere of application (no specication is to be added). I think it is clear that it

must function in the rst way here, since otherwise Aristotles rst alternative
would entail his second: if necessity applies hypothetically, then it applies in the
broad sense. Asking whether things are hypothetically necessary or necessary in a
broad sense would be like asking whether Pat is a man or a human. us Aristotle must be asking whether things are hypothetically necessaryhence, necessary
in a secondary, qualied senseor necessary in the primary, unqualied sense.
Now, what is necessary in the materialists sense is far from being necessary in
the primary, unqualied sense of necessity. Aristotle is about to compare the materialists to someone who thinks that a wall has come into being necessarily. If
this person has unqualied necessity in mind, then, as Aristotle thinks of necessity, he is committed to holding that the wall in question always had, has, and will
have come into being, which is incoherent, or, not much better, that the wall always was, is, and will be coming into being. In fact, given the story he tells, it
isnt clear that the materialist philosopher is appealing to necessity in any sense of
necessity ocially recognized by Aristotle: he may just mean that things are
caused in a certain, aimless way. At most, the necessity he invokes is conditional:
necessarily, if there are such-and-such materials, thus-and-thus disposed, then a
wall (or a duck, or whatever it may be) comes into being.
If this is so, then how does does Aristotles opening question relate to the passage it introduces? He is not actually going to describe any view on which the second alternative is true. Rather, it turns out to be common to the people nowadays and Aristotle himself that natural necessity is (at most) hypothetical
necessity: on one view, it is necessary that the wall comes into being if there are

. Cf. Bonitz Index, s.v. . e glosses and are given at , , while

and related senses are given from .
. Obviously replacing or with or also would not make things any better.
. , -.
. For the equivalence between necessarily and always, see NE VI., -, GC II., -,
De Caelo I..

rst suitable quantities of earth, stone and wood suitably arranged; on the other it
is necessary that the wall comes into being if certain things will be sheltered and
guarded.
I think the best way to understand the situation is this. We have reason to
think that materialist philosophers such as Empedocles and Democritus spoke of
necessity full stop in one sense, namely without making distinctions among
dierent ways of being necessary. Aristotle says so in Parts of Animals. But if
they were in the habit of saying necessary without adding any qualifying or
specifying phrase, then they may have given the impression that whatever they
called necessary was necessary full stop in the other sense, i.e., primarily and
fully necessary. is makes it reasonable for Aristotle to ask whether natural objects and occurrences are in fact necessary in the primary sense. He will condently answer No at because both dominant accounts of natural necessity,
when properly understood, entail that natural necessity is hypothetical. Meanwhile he will also argue for one of these accounts over the other. us the train of
thought turns out to be:
A Does necessity apply hypothetically, as I (Aristotle) think, or without qualication, as people nowadays think?
B

People nowadays think that necessity applies in way X. First of all,

on examination X turns out to be hypothetical.

But theyre wrong in another way too: necessity doesnt apply in

way X but in way Y. Y is also hypothetical.

D Necessity denitely applies hypothetically: this is true even on their

account of necessity. But moreover, their account is wrong.
I grant that this structure is anything but clearly signalled in the text, but this
would not be the rst time Aristotle gave a misleading impression of the ow of

. PA I., . Aristotle doesnt name names; he says pretty much everyone (

).
. For discussion of the last sentence, including how but not as an end serves to contradict the
materialists view of necessity, see section ...

his thought. It seems to me more probable that he has done so here than that he
has used two terms, and , in unattested senses, so as to refer
specically to end-related and non-teleological necessity, respectively. e reader
may disagree with me, but I hope I have at least shown that the choice must be
made: poor signposts, or technical terms used contrary to precedent and without
explanation?

Having posed his question about necessity, Aristotle goes right on to remark
upon, and object to, what people nowadays think. He does not actually state the
view he is attacking, but only gives an analogy; so it is from this and Aristotles objections that we will have to extract it. Let us begin from Hardie and Gayes translation (in Barnes ()).
,
, ,
, .
e current view places what is of necessity in the process of production, just
as if one were to suppose that the wall of a house necessarily comes to be because what is heavy is naturally carried downwards and what is light to the
top, so that the stones and foundations take the lowest place, with earth above
because it is lighter, and wood at the top of all as being the lightest.
(-, tr. Hardie and Gaye.)
ere are questions about the rst clause of this sentence: isnt it common
ground between Aristotle and his opponents that there is necessity in the generation (Hardie and Gayes process of production)? All parties would agree that at
least some parts of a things generation happen from necessity; the disagreement
is about the sense in which this is so. I think we should do one of two things. One
is to adjust the punctuation so as to remove the impression that necessitys location is in dispute. e current view in the following way: as if one were to

Another is to take in as an in of dependence. On the current view, what is necessary is necessitated by, and so in some sense depends on, the way a thing has
come into being. On Aristotles view, what is necessary is necessitated by a things
end, not by its generation. Since this issue doesnt aect our immediate concerns, I
will set it aside for now, and come back to it in section ...
Now Aristotle describes a person who believes that a wall has come into being
because heavy things naturally go downwards and light things naturally go upwards. us stones have gone downwards so as to form a foundation, earth has
gone on top of the stones, and wood has gone onto the very top. (I have supplied
forms of the verb to go with the adverbs down, up, and
topmost in lines -. is is Aristotles standard verb for local motion
as opposed to other kinds of change. One could equally well supply forms of to be: because heavy things go down and light up, stones are down, earth is
above, and wood is topmost.)
Now apparently, the person who tells this story about the walls generation
thinks it warrants saying that the wall has come into being from necessity. It is
somewhat obscure why this should be so. It was no part of the story that heavy
things necessarily go down and light things necessarily go up, only that heavy
things are naturally such as to move down and light things are naturally such as to
move up. Aristotle says at one point in Parts of Animals that necessity sometimes
signies that things are thus and are thus by nature, and this may be all that
necessity is signifying in the present case. Just what that amounts to remains to be
seen.
What are the essential features of the wall storywhat carries over to the
physical theories under discussion? I think there are two views at its heart, of
which the rst is this: the walls coming into being is said to be brought about by

. Cf. Physics passim, DA I., , Bonitz Index s.v. .

. PA I., -. .

the very same things which then constitute the wall. e same things are both material causes and moving causes of the walls coming into being (as well as of the
wall itself). ere are many possible ways to carry over and generalize this, but
here is one:
Every natural object is the end product of changes that were brought about by
the stus of which the object is constituted.
Now the coincidence of a things moving causes with its constituents does not,
on its own, entail the materialists characteristic view of generation. Consider the
founding of a political community: the polis may be brought into being by the
very same itemsi.e., peoplewho then constitute it. Its moving causes and constituents coincide, but this does not imply that the polis comes into being in some
aimless, necessitated way.
e wall-theorist does not just say that the wall was brought about by its constituents; he species which constituents he has in mind. ese are fairly simple
stus, and the motions they naturally undergo are equally simple. Probably the
theorist regards their motions and motive powers as having no direction towards
any end; they are in that sense brute motions and brute tendencies to move. is
would seem to be the second core feature of the wall story:
e powers that simple stus have to impart motion are aimless.
Putting these together, we get the following view:
Every natural object is the end product of changes that were aimlessly brought
about by the simple stus of which the object is constituted.
Now we are ready to consider how Aristotle articulates his disagreement with
this view.

. My point is not intended to rely on any detailed view about the metaphysics of cities, for instance as to whether they are substances. Im just using the city as a metaphor to illustrate a conceptual possibility regarding natural objects.

. : Ingredients as moving causes

Aristotle comments on the wall story as follows:

,
, .
Whereas, though the wall has not come into being without these [namely
earth, stone, and wood], it has not come into being due to these except as due
to matter, but for the sake of sheltering and guarding certain things. (-)
Not due to these except as due to matter, but for the sake of sheltering and guarding. According to a common reading, Aristotles not but means that material causes are not really causes, but merely things whose presence is a conditio sine
qua non, whereas nal causes are really causes. is is in fact very close to a
view expressed by Socrates in Platos Phaedo. I do not think we should attribute
it to Aristotle: rst, because it is not what he literally says here, and second, because his ocial view is that standing to something as matter is a way of being its
cause. e phrase Aristotle uses for it here, (as due to matter), is

. Charles (), p. paraphrases a later remark (-), e goal is not present because
of these things, although they are its material cause (emphasis original). It seems to me that he is
reading the end of the sentence - without proper regard for its rst half (
, . However, the end is not present due to these
except as matter, nor will it be present due to these.) It seems natural either to understand except
as matter again in the nal clause, or else to give weight to Aristotles shi into future tense. Material causation would seem always to be synchronic, not diachronic; hence nothing future is due to
anything as matter now. Lear (), p. paraphrases, although the house cannot come to be
without matter, it is not due to the matter (emphasis original). Sauv Meyer (), p. lists our
remark among Aristotles oen repeated denial that matter is the cause of a teleologically explicable result. A dierent take on this sentence is that its point is to downgrade material causation (at
least for generation), though not to deny altogether that it is a mode of causation. Schoeld (),
p. writes, Aristotle is apt to say that such things or processes [cups, statues, the making of cups
and statues] do not come about because of matter except in the way (i.e. the derivative or secondary way) that things do come about because of matter. Emphasis added in the parenthesis.
Simplicius in Ph .- seems to have a similar thought:
. Hardie and Gayes punctuation
and emphasis also suggests this reading.
. Phaedo -. Socrates says that it would be absurd to call his sinews and bones causes of
his sitting where he is, and that they are instead things without which the real cause (
) would not be a cause.

quite close to his default method of referring to the modes of causation in Physics
II.. ere he spoke of four primary ways () in which one thing can be or
be called a cause of another, and he referred to each by means of an adverbial
phrase beginning with as (): as the goal, as matter (or as substrate), as
the essence, as that whence the motion (or as principle of motion). Here we
have simply the converse of that locution: instead of x is the cause of y as ___,
we have y is due to x as due to ___. (Repeating due to () helps make clear
that x, not y, is the element functioning as ___.)
So Aristotle is saying in a fairly straightforward way that earth, stone, and
wood are material causes of a wall and that they are not causes of a wall in any
other way. In what other way might they be thought to cause a wall? Aristotle has
claimed that his four modes of causation are exhaustive, so unless the wall-theorist is simply talking nonsense he must be regarding the earth, stone and wood
as either nal, formal, or moving causes of the wall. It seems clear enough, in fact,
that the theorist regards them as moving causes. is, then, must be what Aristotle is denying: that the walls materials are among the sources or principles of motion for the coming into being of the wall.
Again, there are many ways one could generalize and carry this over to the natural case. is time Aristotle does give us some help. He goes on to say,
, ,
, ,
.
Similarly in all cases in which there is the for something: though not without
those whose nature is necessary, not due to them except as due to matter, but
for the sake of something. (-, my translation.)
(For what whose nature is necessary means, see section ...)
Here is a proposal as to the view Aristotle is expressing:
. : , , -. : . : -.
: . : . : .
. Physics II., , . II., . Metaphysics ., . ., .

e ingredients to a natural objects generation never bring about any of

the changes by which the object comes into being.
It may be worth noting that Aristotle only denies to a things materials the role
of moving cause for itself and its generation. is does not rule out their being
sources of any motion at all: Aristotle may well think they are sources of some motion, since they are natural bodies and a nature is a principle of motion and
rest. e causal classication of Physics II. is a classication of causal relations
between pairs of items: it is oriented around questions of the form in what way is
x a cause of y?, not of the simpler form what kind of cause is x?.

. : What a thing and its generation are for

Not due to these except as due to matter, but for the sake of sheltering and guarding certain things. According to the reading I mentioned and rejected in section
, the contrast marked by not but is that between being (really) due to
ones matter and being (really) due to ones nal cause. On my reading, the contrast is between having a certain moving cause, on the one hand, and having a certain nal cause, on the other. is may strike us as infelicitous: compare, e
statue was not made by Michelangelo but for the sake of beauty.

. (a) By ingredients I wish to refer to everything that underlies any of the changes involved
in generation: both those that survive the sequence of changes to underlie the nished product,
and those that dont. (b) On one reading of necessary nature, we might restrict the claim to those
ingredients whose powers are aimless.
. As my paraphrase of Aristotles view shows, I take this to entail that a things materials do not
bring about any parts of the things generation. Cooper (b), pp. -, in contrast, thinks
Aristotle allows that certain particular stages in the formation of a living thing may be materially
necessitated, and insists only that Democritean necessity does not suce to explain the coming
to be of any fully formed plant or animal (emphasis added). However, even without sucing to
bring about a fully formed organism, if the materials bring about any stages in the organisms generation, then I think they should count among the moving causes of that generation. And this is
ruled out on my reading of the lines in question.
. Physics II.. I take Aristotle to be fairly free in transposing causal claims from a things nature
to the thing itself, so that if these bodies natures are moving causes of any changes then Aristotle
would call the bodies themselves moving causes of those same changes.

It would certainly have been easier if, aer saying that the walls materials are
not moving causes of the walls generation, Aristotle had used but to introduce
whatever is in fact the moving cause. We might have expected to read, for example, , , the wall has not
come into being due to these things except as due to matter, but by the agency of a
crasman. However, I think the sentence is comfortable enough as it stands,
provided that Aristotle takes it to be obvious that if earth, stone and wood are the
moving causes of a walls generation, then the wall does not come into being for
the sake of sheltering and guarding things. Compare, is wasnt le here by the
windit was le here to warn us!
is is Aristotles second objection: contrary to the view under scrutiny, the
wall comes into being for the sake of sheltering and protecting.
Just to be explicit about it, there are two closely related but distinct questions
in the neighborhood, one about a thing and the other about its coming into being:
namely, what did X come into being for, and what is X for. Since Aristotle uses the
verb (come to be) in preference to (be) in this passage, I take it
that the question under consideration is of the rst kind. In saying that the wall
has come into being (not just that it is) for the sake of sheltering and guarding,
Aristotle may be relying on a principle such as the following:
If is the coming to be of , and exists or obtains for the sake of , then
occurs for the sake of .
is principle also shows us a connection between ones account of motions
and ones view about substantial forms. Supposing that the joint motion of stone,
earth, and wood described by the wall-theorist really is the generation of a wall, as
such, and that the motion does not occur for the sake of sheltering and guarding,

. See, for example, what Aristotle says of a stone which fell by chance:
, . It fell by chance, because it
could fall by someones agency and for the sake of striking.
. See ... An adverbial phrase such as as such or non-accidentally should be understood.

it follows by modus tollens that the completed wall itself does not exist for the sake
of sheltering and guarding. In Aristotles view, what it is to be a wall doubtless includes being for sheltering and guarding. is means that the wall-theorist is
committed to disagreeing with Aristotle not only about how walls come to be, but
about what walls are.

I suggested that Aristotle takes it to be obvious that if earth, stone and wood
are the moving causes of a walls generation then the wall does not come into being for the sake of sheltering and guarding things. In fact this does seem pretty
obvious, but it is not easy to say why.
First of all, we might ask exactly how strong a claim Aristotle is presupposing:
is it only that on the wall-theorists story, the wall does not come into being for the
sake of this particular thing, i.e. sheltering and guarding things, or is it that on the
story, the wall does not come into being for the sake of anything at all?
e answer to this might depend on the force of , are naturally such,
at -, heavy
things are naturally such as to move downwards, light things to the top. In Aristotelian physics, nature is teleological and natural tendencies such as these ones
are goal-oriented. In other writers, on the contrary, nature is grouped with chance
as an aimless cause, in contrast to art (whether human or divine). On the former view, the wall does come into being for the sake of something, namely whatever the ingredients are moving around for presumably, being in their natural
places. On the latter view, presumably the wall does not come into being for the
sake of anything.

. Platos Laws X includes a summary of the sort of view that would justify this grouping.

.. e view here in the Physics

e question remains what justies Aristotles inference from a claim about

moving causation (the wall is formed due to earth, stone and wood as moving
causes) to a claim about nal causation (the wall is not formed for sheltering and
guarding). Let me attempt an answer.
On the story under discussion, the walls formation is jointly brought about by
many bits of earth, stone and wood, and this joint causation complicates things.
Lets begin with a simpler case, in which a change has a single proximate moving
cause. Suppose the change occurs for X, and that this is (in some sense) intrinsic
to the change: it doesnt count as occurring for X merely in virtue of some special
features of its context. Suppose also that the proximate moving cause is a power to
eect this specic kind of change (as for example a cra, such as medicine, is a
power to eect a certain kind of change, such as becoming healthy). en, I think,
the proximate moving cause of the change has both the change and the changes
aim X as aims of its own. (Continuing the medicine example, medicine is for becoming healthy and for health.)
Now consider a single motion of a bit of earth, stone, or wood, as accounted
for on the story under discussion. is motion is due to the bit of material itself,
exercising a powernamely, weight or lightnessto engage in upward or
downward motion. We may assume that neither weight nor lightness, nor earth,
stone, nor wood, has sheltering and guarding as an aim. erefore, it is at least not

. Of course, the exercise of this cra consists not in becoming healthy but in making healthy,
and I suppose medicine is most immediately for the latterthe active side of the change in question. Medicine is for making healthy, which is for becoming healthy (the former is valuable because the latter is), which is for health (again, the former is valuable because the latter is).
. I am not entirely sure whether this power is active, passive, or intransitive. I assume that it is
some kind of (impulse)cf. Phys II., and Ill regard it as imparting the materials
upward or downward motion.

intrinsic to the materials upward or downward motion that it occurs for the sake
of sheltering and guarding.
We will see that in GA Aristotle has a view on which intrinsically aimless activities may turn out to occur for an aim, if they are used by something else to further that aim. Howeverwhether for didactic reasons, or because Aristotles view
evolved over timethe view does not seem to be present in this chapter of the
Physics. (Otherwise, as he does in GA, he could allow that such things as re function as moving causes in generation, and maintain the weaker claim that simple
stus are not the only moving causes in generation.) I propose that he here assumes that an activity occurs for X if and only if it intrinsically occurs for X. On
this assumption, no single motion of a bit of earth, stone, or wood in the course of
the walls formation occurs for sheltering and guarding.
But when a change as a whole occurs for something, each of the changes constituent changes occurs for that something. When I walk to the port to watch
the boats come in, I take each step for the sake of watching the boats come in; if I
am baking a cake to celebrate a birthday, I beat the eggs to celebrate a birthday. By
contraposition, if none of the single motions of earth, stone and wood constituting the walls formation occurs for sheltering and guarding, then the wall is not
formed for sheltering and guarding.
Here is the argument in summary.

If a change as a whole occurs for X, then each of its constituent

changes occurs for X.

Whether a change occurs for X is intrinsic to the change.

e formation of the wall is due to its ingredients wood, earth,

and stone as movers. (Supposition)

. is may need to be qualied in some way. If I incorporate some ourishes into my walk to
the port, those ourishes do not occur for the sake of reaching the port or watching the boats
come in. On the other hand, it is not clear in that case that the ourishes and the walk compose a
single change.

When wood, stone, or earth brings about a change, that change is

not intrinsically for sheltering and guarding.

When wood, stone, or earth brings about a change, that change is

not for sheltering and guarding, period. (, )

Some or all of the constituent changes of the wall's formation do

not occur for sheltering and guarding. (, )

e wall is not formed for sheltering and guarding. (, )

With this argument, or something like it, in the background, Aristotle can assume that if something comes into being due to its ingredients as moving causes,
then the things generation has no aim which is not an aim of each of its ingredients; and that if somethings generation does have an aim which is not an aim of
each of its ingredients, then the thing does not come into being due to its ingredients as moving causes.

.. More nuanced view in GA

Aristotles claim in the Physics that a generated things ingredients are causes only
as matter should be compared with what he says in two other passages. One is in
the last chapter of Generation of Animals (henceforth GA), V., -; the other
is at Generation and Corruption II., -. Here is what Aristotle says in GA:

, , . ,

,
,
.
Democritus, having given up saying what things are for, refers to necessity all
the things that nature uses. ey are as he says, but they are so for something,

namely for the sake of what is better in each case. Hence there is nothing to
prevent [teeth] forming and falling out in this way, but because of the end, not
because of these: these are causes as movers and tools, and as matter. It is
plausible that many things are made by means of pneuma (breath) as a tool
Saying that the causes are from necessity is as if someone thought that the water drained out from those with edema solely because of the knife, and not on
account of being healthy, which is that for which the knife cut. (GA V.,
.)

ere are many points of interest in this passage, but what I want to call attention to now is just that Aristotle adds a second way in which material elements or
low-level mixtures of elements function as causes in natural generation. In addition to being causes as matter, they are also causes , as
movers and tools. I take it that this is a hendiadys: the idea is that these materials
are used as tools to impart motion. is idea was introduced earlier, at GA II.,
-: speaking of heat and cold ( and ), Aristotle said that nature uses boththey have a power from necessity so as for one to act in this way
and the other to act in that, but nevertheless it turns out, in things that are coming
into being, to be for something that the one of them cools while the other heats,
and that each of the parts comes into being. (
,
.) Each has a power from necessity such as to act on things
in this or that way, but they can be used by nature, and when they are used in a
certain way as they are in natural generation then they heat and cool for the

. I have quoted Louis (), the Bud text. Drossaart Lulofs (), the OCT edition, prints
, citing manuscript E and two translations (Moerbekes Latin translation
and a century Arabic translation by Yahiy ibn al-Bitrq). e additional gives the impression that Aristotle is listing not two but three ways in which materials function as causes: as
movers, as tools, and as matter. is seems doctrinally improbable, and the manuscript evidence is
pretty strongly against it: the text of GA in E dates back only to the th century and is not among
the more important sources for the text. e four manuscripts on which Louis mainly relies for his
Bud edition, P, S, Y and Z, none of them read the additional .

sake of something (presumably, for the sake of that for which they are used by
nature).
Aristotle doesnt explain his idea in detail. Before I try to ll out the picture,
let us review what we have seen him actually say. In GA II. he said of some things
that they are causes both as matter and as motion-imparting tools. In GA II. he
said of some things that (i) they have a power from necessity to do this or that,
(ii) nature uses them, and (iii) in generation they do this or that for the sake of
something. He said these in a way that linked (i) and (iii): on the one hand (i),
but nevertheless (iii). is suggests that he regards (i) as implying that, when they
are acting just on their own, the things in question do this or that without any
aim.
Now here is a fuller (hence in some respects speculative) picture. Many powers or capacities () are, in their nature, for the activity which is their exercise. Sight is for seeing. e art of house-building is for building houses. A seeds
generative capacity is for the generation of an organism of a certain kind. In such
cases, the activity which is the exercise of the capacity is also, in its nature, for
something: either for its own sake, as perhaps seeing is, or for the sake of its outcome, as house-building is for a house and generation is for the resulting organism. e capacity, in addition to being for the activity, is also for whatever the activity is for: the art of house-building is for houses, a seeds generative capacity is
for the organism that is to be generated.
Some powers or capacities, on the other hand, are not, in their nature, for the
activity which is their exercise. Perhaps heat is not, in its nature, for heating, and
cold is not, in its nature, for cooling. is is at least part of what is conveyed, in
the context of GA II., by saying that the powers are had from necessity. In such
cases, the activity too is not, in its nature, for anything: perhaps heating and cooling are not in their natures for anything. (By in its nature I mean to be labelling
the rst pole of a distinction between what a thing or activity is for in its own

right or intrinsically, and what it might be for in virtue of the larger context in
which it is embedded.)
Something with a power of the second kind might be made use of by something with a power of the rst kind. If this happens in the right way, then the exercise of the intrinsically aimless power will have something it is for, namely, it will
be for what it is used by the aiming power to bring about. Aristotle likens this sort
of case to a surgeons use of his knife. Of course a knife is in fact for something
cutting but we can imagine a surgeon appropriating something sharp to use as a
knife which was not made to be so used. Suppose a surgeon does that, using for
example a sharp piece of int as a blade to make an incision, so as to drain uid
from an edematous patient. So far as the int alone is concerned, the incision is
not for anything. e int simply has a disposition such that when it is drawn
along something so, it cuts that thing. Neither the sharp int nor its disposition
to cut is for cutting, and when it does cut something, it is not intrinsic to the action that it cuts for the sake of an outcome. On the other hand, the int is drawn
along a certain part of the patients body by a doctor exercising the art of medicine
and for a purpose; because of this, the incision occurs for the sake of health.
I see two slightly dierent ways of understanding the situation: on one, the
doctor cuts for the sake of health but the int cuts without aim; on the other, the
int itself (as well as the doctor) cuts for the sake of health.
In connection with the rst, we must recall a point about using something to
impart change to something. When a man moves a stone, for example, by means
of a stick, it is correct to say both that the stick and that the man moves the

. I have just said that, where an activity is the exercise of a capacity, the activity is in its nature
for something if and only if the capacity is in its nature for that same thing, as well as for the activity itself. It oen makes it easier to judge whether an activity is for something by looking to the capacity, just as we may identify the purpose of a human action by looking to the intention which it
manifests. So it seemed natural to put capacity rst in order of presentation. But I do not think the
activity is goal-directed in virtue of the capacitys being goal-directed: it is more likely the other
way around.

stone. Similarly, in our surgery case it should be correct to say both that the
doctor and that the int cuts the patients body. Now, on one way of understanding the situation, we think this: when the doctor cuts the patient, his cutting is an
exercise of the art of medicine; when the int cuts the patient, its cutting is a manifestation of an aimless disposition. erefore the doctor cuts the patient (by
means of the int, of course) for the sake of health, but the int does not cut the
patient for the sake of anything.
On the second approach, we insist that the int itself cuts for the sake of
health. On the rst view we inferred from the aimlessness of the ints disposition
to the aimlessness of its action, but that inference is shaky. ere are three
terms to be distinguished, namely () the disposition (or power or capacity I
mean ), () the action, and () the outcome. e fact that () is not for the
sake of () may entail that () is not in its nature for anything, but it does not entail that () is not in some contexts for the sake of () at all. e capacity to crack
ones knuckles is probably not teleologically oriented, but I can still crack my
knuckles for something, e.g., for fun. us we could say that although in cutting
the int manifests a disposition which is not for cutting, still in this case it does
cut for the sake of health. e fact that it cuts for an aim is not intrinsic to the int
and its action, but obtains in virtue of the context in which that cutting is
embedded.
I nd the rst way of talking somewhat more natural, at least in many cases.
When I light the stove in order to cook eggs, it seems natural to say that I heat the
pan in order that eggs be cooked, but forced to say that the ame heats the pan in
order that eggs be cooked. However, Aristotle prefers the second form of expression: he says that being healthy ( ) is that for which the knife cut (
). Likewise in the passage I quoted from II. he says

. Physics VIII., -
. I use action simply as a nominalization of acting on, without wishing to imply intentionality or anything like that.

that it turns out to be for something that the one of themthem being heat and
coldcools while the other heats (
).
I think its an important feature of these cases that the intrinsically aimless action is not merely taken advantage of aer the fact, but is actually initiated by (or
controlled by, or even part of or numerically one with) an action with an aim. In
contrast, the formation of the sharp int, for example, does not turn out to occur
for the sake of something merely in virtue of the ints being appropriated as a
blade. Similarly, in cases where residual waste is put to some advantage by nature,
I would not expect to nd Aristotle saying that the residue is produced for the sake
of the advantage.
In sum, we nd in GA a more nuanced view of the role of a things ingredients
in its generation than what is presented here in the Physics. Here in the Physics,
Aristotle seems to think it necessary, in order to uphold the goal-directed character of natural generation, to deny any role as moving causes to elements, simple
mixtures, or anything else whose power is not aimed at the result of the generation as a whole. erefore he insists that these things are not causes in any way
other than as material causes. In the GA Aristotle has found a way to allow them a
role as sources of change, namely by regarding them as tools whose powers are
used and controlled by the cause of the larger, goal-directed process of which their
activities are a part.

.. More nuanced view in GC?

e more sophisticated picture, on which we may allow some role as moving

causes to a things ingredients, also seems to be in evidence in Generation and
Corruption (henceforth GC) II., -. As in GA, Aristotle will diagnose
a certain mistake as similar to that of attributing all responsibility for a change to
the tools by which the change was eected.

ere is a subtle dierence between the way the issue is posed here and the
way it was posed (or at least, the way I discussed it) in the Physics and GA. In the
other two passages, the key points seemed to be made in terms of moving causation, whereas here they are made in terms of agency. e notions of moving cause
and agent of change are closely related, but they are not exactly the same. For
now, however, I am not going worry about what the dierence is; I will treat
agency and moving causation as equivalent for present purposes.
Aristotle criticizes a view which he describes thus:
, , , , .
Because so they say the hot is naturally such as to separate, cold to put together, and each of the others to do this or undergo that, they say it is from
these and due to these that all other things come to be and perish. (GC II.,
.)
I take it that from signies constitution or underlying: this preposition tells
us that the hot, the cold, etc., are matter for all generation and perishing. e due
to, on the other hand, brings in agency and moving causation. e combination
of from and due to, and , tells us that, according to the view in question,
the very same things both underlie and bring about each instance of generation or
perishing. (I mean, for any instance of generation or perishing, the same stu

. Aristotle may countenance moving causes which are patients. According to Physics VIII, the
natural simple bodies are moved by something else when they undergo their natural motions; they
are patients of these motions. But they have natures, which are at least principles () of the natural changes they undergo, and I think moving causes of those changes (cf. at Phys II.,
). According to the account of perception in De Anima and De Sensu, the perceptive part of
the soul is a patient of the quasi-alteration involved in coming to perceive something (cf. DA .
and ., De Sensu , ), but also a principle and quasi-moving cause of that quasi-alteration (DA ., -). In the Philosophical Lexicon entry on , Meta ., it is said that in
addition to principles of change in something else ( ) there are also principles of change by something else ( ). ese look to me like passive
moving causes. In contrast, there are references in Physics II. to the moving cause as
... in sum, what acts and what changes [transitive] (),
in sum, what acts (). ese suggest that moving cause = agent of change.

both underlies it and brings it about. I dont mean that it must be the same stu in
one instance as in another instance.)
Summing up the view Aristotle is criticizing: () ere is some (small) number
of basic stus, characterized by simple qualities such as heat and cold. () Each of
these stus, in virtue of its simple qualities, is naturally such as () to act in
some particular way or to be aected in some particular way. () Every (socalled) generation and destruction is a change undergone by some portion of
these stus. () Every such change is brought about by some or all of the stu
which undergoes it, acting in the way in which it is naturally such as to act.
Aristotle makes two objections to this view, one of which turns on passivity,
and the other of which turns on instrumentality.

e passivity objection

e rst objection (-, -) is that the role of matter is the role of

patient, not of agent; the conclusion is not spelled out, but is presumably that a
things matter is not that which generates it (, ). His arguments are
both appeals to obviousness: rst, the point is clear from examples of nature and
crawater does not make an animal out of itself, wood does not make a bed out
of itself (-); second, even re (the most active of the elements) evidently is
moved as well as, or perhaps as opposed to, moving others ().
is objection has a conceptual aspect and an empirical aspect. e conceptual aspect begins from the point that, every change having a subject, what it is to be
the matter of a change is to be the subject of the change; hence it belongs to matter
to undergo change (). Given, moreover, that every change consists in the

. e view described here goes naturally with the one sketched in Physics II., on which the basic stu or stus are all the substance there is, they are eternal, and everything else is an aection,
disposition, or arrangement of these (-). On this further view, there is no substantial
change no genuine generation or destruction only changes in the accidents of the basic stus.

subjects being changed by an agent, we can say that it belongs to matter to be

aected () and changed (, this time with passive force, not middle). is is just what it is to be the matter of a change. If the same thing both undergoes and brings about a change (as when Socrates stands up), it does not undergo and bring about the change in the same capacity, but in dierent capacities.
Acting and imparting motion belongs to a dierent capacity () than that
of matter.
Now this conceptual point alone does not contradict the view that every
change is brought about by some or all of the stu that undergoes it. It only shows
that the view involves attributing two dierent roles to the same things. Aristotle
has a further empirical claim, which is that (at least where the materials are simple
stus) the same thing will not be both the matter and the agent of a change. To
support this further claimwhat is not required to sustain the conceptual point
he appeals to observed fact: that water does not make itself into an animal, that
wood does not make itself into a bed, that re is moved.
Why does Aristotle care about this? Presumably because he takes it for granted, as he does in Physics II., that if the simple constituents of thingsre, water,
etc.are what bring about the processes resulting in ferns, puppies, and so forth,
then those processes do not occur for the sake of the existence of ferns, puppies,
and so forth. Hence the question about agency or moving causation is tied to a
question about nal causation.
Some of Aristotles language in this passage suggests that the matter of generation plays an entirely passive role: not only does it not generate, i.e. function as
the agent of generation as a whole, but it does not bring about any changes whatsoever throughout the course of generation. I get this impression from the statement that it belongs to matter to be aected and be changed and from the merely hypothetical character (even if, ) of the concession at that
re acts and imparts motion. is would align the passage with the view I have
attributed to Aristotle in Physics II.. Still, all he strictly says, and all that his ob-

jection requires, is that no ingredient to generation is the agent of the generation

as a whole. is is the claim that the examples of water and wood are said to illustrate (water doesnt make an animal, wood doesnt make a bed); and the point
that re is seen to be changed and aected does not entail that re never also acts
on and changes other things: what it suggests is that even if re is an agent, still
there is some further controlling agent.

e instrumentality objection

Aristotles second objection (, ) is that the materialists attribute

generation to powers which are too instrumental ( ). He likens
these theorists to someone who thinks of a change as caused by a crasmans tools
and not by the crasman himself.
, ,

, . , , .
Moreover, the powers they attribute to bodies and through which they generate are too instrumental
Moreover, they act much as if someone assigned the cause of what comes into
being to the saw and each of the tools: for it is necessary that division occurs
with something sawing, and smoothing occurs with something planing,
and likewise with the others. Hence, however much re acts and imparts

. So in the texts of Joachim () and Mugler (). In Rashed (), they are powers that
are assigned too instrumentally ( ). I think my interpretation is compatible with
either version of the text.
. Aristotles language is ambiguous between: (a) necessarily, if something is sawing then something is being divided, and if something is planing then something is being smoothed; and (b)
necessarily, if something is being divided then something is sawing, and if something is being
smoothed then something is planing.

change, still they fail to see how it imparts changeit is worse than tools.
(-, -.)
By calling powers instrumental, I suppose Aristotle means that they are, in
point of fact, powers characteristic of tools. e only examples we have in this
passage are the power of heat to separate and the power of cold to bring together.
I dont know why these should be considered characteristic of tools, but presumably it is just because they are so simple. Aristotle surely does not mean that the
materialists themselves think that the powers in question (or the stus which have
them) are used as instruments. Rather the point of the analogy in lines - is that
they mistake tools for ultimate causes.
Unlike in GA, Aristotle does not positively say here that simple powers are
movers and tools for natural generation. However, given the similarity of the criticism and supporting analogies employed here and in GA, it is natural to think
that the same view is in the background.
But if so, why does Aristotle say in line that re imparts motion less well
than tools? Shouldnt he say that it imparts motion precisely as (hence equally well
as) a tool? Perhaps he means that re unguided produces worse changes than does
a tool in the hands of a crasman. e line of thought could be: (a) these people
attribute powers to materials such as re which are similar to the powers of tools
such as a saw, plane, etc.; (b) they attribute the generation of plants and animals
entirely to the exercise of such powers; but (c) tools only produce cra products
when they are used by a crasman to do so (and we should expect something similar in the natural case); (d) moreover, we can just see that re le to its own devices doesnt produce changes anything like the changes produced by tools in a
crasmans hands; so (e) if re does in fact produce such nuanced changes as are
required to yield a plant or animal, then it does so only when it is used to do so,

. ough if we go with option (b) in the previous note, perhaps Aristotle is thinking that tools
are necessary for, but not causes of, the changes for which they are used (cf. Phaedo ).

something like the way tools are used by a crasman. In line , Aristotle would
be emphasizing point (d).

anks to these comparisons, we have now seen a few descriptions of the sort of
materialist view Aristotle opposes. Aristotle tends to express the view in terms of
what things are naturally such as to do (how they ), in terms of necessity,
and in terms of a conation of the two roles of underlying change on the one
hand, and bringing about change on the other. We have also seen that Aristotle
has somewhat dierent responses to the view in dierent texts. is led me to suggest that there is a distinction suppressed in the Physics but present in GA and
perhaps GC, between having an end intrinsically and having an end in virtue of
being used as an instrument to eect that end.

Along the way I have suggested a handful of general principles on which Aristotle
might implicitly rely in making the inferences and posing the oppositions he does.
Let me list them here. It will be an ongoing project to see whether each of these
principles really ought to be attributed to Aristotle, and, if so, how exactly they
should be expressed and qualied.

.. Activity is intrinsically for X > Power is for X

.. Activity is intrinsically for X > Moving cause is for X

.. O is for X <> Generation of O is for X

.. Change is for X > parts of change are for X

.. (In Physics only: activity is for X <> activity is intrinsically for X)

People sometimes claim to detect a form of compatibilism in Aristotle between

causation by mechanistic necessity and nal causation. Maybe they see it in Parts
of Animals, when Aristotle says of various things that they are both due to (mechanistic) necessity and for the sake of something. Or maybe they attribute it on
broadly philosophical lines, thinking that todays science has settled the question
in favor of aimless ecient causation, and that Aristotles continued relevance depends on the compatibility between his doctrines and those of todays science. No
doubt there are other reasons too.

. Frede () writes, e crucial dierence [between Aristotelian and modern science] does
not lie in the details of a theory of the material constituents of objects and their properties. e
crucial dierence rather lies in the answer to the question whether such a theory will provide us
with a complete understanding of natural objects and their behaviour or not (p. ). In his view,
Aristotle says nothing to rule out there being perfectly good explanations of natural processes in
material, chemical terms. Such explanations would not omit any details or qualities of the natural
processes (p. ), but would nevertheless (for reasons I do not follow) fail to yield the right kind
of complete understanding of those processes. Nussbaum & Putnam () advocate an interpretation of Aristotles psychology on which perception and intentional action are realized in, and supervene on, what seem to be aimless material changes and transitions (see esp. pp. ). See also

It will be another ongoing project to work out how a compatibilist thesis

would best be stated, and whether any such thesis is consistent with Aristotles
views. A promising line of inquiry, I think, is to make use of the distinction I have
tried to articulate in this chapter between having an end intrinsically or in ones
own right, and having an end in virtue of being embedded in some appropriate
context. us one compatibilist thesis would be that all changes, processes, and in
general activities ( in the inclusive sense) are intrinsically aimless, but
that some activities have ends in virtue of their context. (For example, one might
think that when a number of activities are related in an appropriately systematic
way, then although each activity is intrinsically aimless, it counts as end-directed
in virtue of its role in the system.) Another would be that all moving-causal powers are intrinsically aimless, but that some of the activities they bring about are
end-directed. (For example, one could tell the same story about systems, or one
could tell a brute overdetermination story, on which the activity has moving cause
x and nal cause y, and thats that.)
I believe the interpretations I have given of Physics II. and of GA V. are inconsistent with such theses. ey suggest that Aristotles teleology requires there
to be both intrinsically end-directed activities, and intrinsically end-directed
powers or moving causes.
In reconstructing the argument of Physics II., I attributed to Aristotle the
views that () a change is intrinsically for X only if its proximate moving cause is
for X, and () a change is for X if and only if it is intrinsically for X. is leaves no

Nussbaum (). Charles (), p. favors an interpretation of Aristotle according to which

Aristotle can maintain that talk of desire is irreducible to talk of physical states while also holding
both that there can (in principle) be a complete physical account of the occurrence of the bodily
movement involved in action, and that the occurrence of given physical states (e.g. blood boiling)
in these circumstances necessitates the occurrence of the relevant desire. Sauv Meyer (), p.
argues that Aristotles thesis of natural teleology is compatible with the thesis of necessity, i.e.,
the thesis that natural phenomena result of necessity from the activities of the material elements
(p. ). Irwin (), pp. - and Sorabji (), p. also endorse forms of compatibilism.
More or less incompatibilist interpretations are defended in Cooper (a), Gotthelf (), Lear
(), Waterlow (), p. , and Bradie & Miller ().

room to say that (a) although individual motions are intrinsically aimless, they
count as happening for the sake of this or that in virtue of playing a role in a system, or that (b) although ecient causation is aimless, motions can still (somehow) count as happening for the sake of this or that.
In my treatment of GA V., I allowed that intrinsically aimless processes could
count as happening for the sake of something. However, this still required that
somewhere up the causal chain there was an intrinsically end-directed moving
cause. And given such causes, it seems unattractive to deny that some activities
are intrinsically end-directed (e.g., those of which the intrinsically end-directed
moving causes are the proximate moving causes).

In order to avoid too many interruptions in my narrative, earlier I deferred treating a handful of interpretive questions about the text of Physics II.. Let me return
to those questions now.

.. Opening question is exclusive, not inclusive disjunction ( )

Is Aristotles opening question a question of the form A, or A and B? or one

of the form A, or [not A but] in fact B?? I believe it is the second. First, there is
some pressure, albeit slight, against the rst reading from the absence of or
anything similar in the rst conjunct. Contrast, for instance, DA II., -:
. Furthermore, hypothetically necessary and simply necessary are mutually exclusive predicates,
and there is nothing in the text to remind the reader that multiple subjects are un-

. Whether [each of the souls parts is a part] in such a way as to be separate in account only, or
also [separate] in place. My translation, my emphasis.

der discussion, such that one might belong to some subjects while the other belonged to other subjects. ere are no words that are grammatically plural: Aristotle does not choose to write , or ,
nor even to repeat from the opening of II.. In other words, he
makes no eort to avoid creating the impression that the disjuncts are mutually
exclusive. Finally, is quite commonly used to emphasize the opposite character
of disjoined predicates: in Plato we nd drunk sober, cities private individuals, and so on. For examples of this usage specically in a question, see Platos Laws V, -, where it is said that a legislator must constantly ask himself
; ; and
Demosthenes Exordium , section :
.
erefore, although it is possible to read Aristotles question such that he is
asking whether necessity belongs only hypothetically or hypothetically and also
simply, it is more natural to understand him as asking whether necessity belongs
hypothetically or whether, to the contrary, it belongs simply.
.. In the generation sentence could be interpreted in either of two ways (in of
location, in of dependence)
On Hardie and Gayes translation, Aristotle seems to regard it as a distinctive feature of the view described that it places what is of necessity in the process of
production. Im not entirely sure what they have in mind with this phrase, but on
a natural reading they mean that, according to the view in question, parts or
stages of the comings-to-be of things come about necessarily. is doesnt seem to
be a distinctive feature of the view, however: it is common ground between Aris-

. Republic ; Laws .
. Plato: What do I want?, and is it coming about, or am I in fact missing the target? Demosthenes: It isnt yet at all clear whether what has been done is a piece of good fortune for them or in
fact the opposite. My translations.

totle and his opponents that some events in a things generation occur necessarily.
Its just that Aristotle thinks theyre necessary for something or other and the others think they necessarily result from something or other.
One alternative to Hardie and Gayes translation is just a matter of reworking
the punctuation. We could translate: Currently, people think necessity is involved
in generation as if one were to think that a wall had come about necessarily on the
following grounds: namely, because. is seems to be the thought behind
Charltons translation of the passage; Bostock too reads it along these lines.
On this reading, the opponents view is not stated in the main clause of the sentence, nor even yet in the clause, but only nally in the clause, when
their reason is given for regarding the wall as having come into being necessarily.
ere is another reading too, on which their position is distinctively characterized in the main clause, i.e., by the claim that the necessary is in the generation.
We need to bear in mind the range of senses which in has (cf. Physics IV.,
- and the ne discussion in Morison (), pp. -). One of these is
said to be the sense in which the aairs of the Greeks were at one time in the
king of Persia. As Morison puts it, it is clear that the Greek word en can express
some sort of dependence, so it is idiomatic Greek to say such-and-such is in him,
meaning that it depends on him, or is up to him.
Now Aristotle is involved in a dispute about what depends on what. (Ill use
determines as the converse of depends on.) On his view the dependence runs
thus: a things purpose determines its features, and its features determine both the
materials it is made of and the way in which it comes into being. On the view he is
opposing here, the order is reversed: a given conguration of ingredients determines a series of movements and changes, and the series of movements and

. Charlton () p. . e general view is that things come to be of necessity, in the way in

which a man might think that a city wall came to be of necessity, if he thought that.
. Bostock (), p. .
. Morison (), p. . See LSJ s.v. , A.I..

changes determines what product (if any) results. A case in which Aristotles picture clearly applies would be a crasmans production of a tool: based on what the
tool will be for, the crasman reasons about what the tool should be like, and
from there to what he should make it out of and how he should make it. us its
matter and generation depend on what the thing is like, and what the thing is like
depends on what it is for. A case in which the other picture clearly applies might
be the erosion of a cli face: the amount and location of rainfall, and the shape
and composition of the cli, result in so much water owing along such-and-such
routes, dissolving this amount of rock; and it is because the process of erosion occurs in a given way that one sort of rock formation results rather than another. In
this case the thing isnt for anything, and what the thing is like depends on its matter and generation. e question, then, is which of these pictures should be extended to cover the case of natural generation.
Lets think about how the question could be phrased. Suppose it is necessary
for an ax to be made of iron. From what does the necessity of being made of iron
derive? On what does it depend? In what is this necessity? e answer is that the
necessity derives from, depends on, is in, the purpose of an ax, namely chopping
or splitting. Suppose, on the other hand, it is necessary that this rock became
shaped like a st. From what does the necessity of being shaped like a st derive?
In what is this necessity? is time the necessity derives from, depends on, is in,
the process which shaped the rock. In the second case, then, necessity is , while in the rst it is (I suppose) . We can read Aristotles
phrase, then, , as saying that
people think of natural occurrences generally on the model of the shaping of a
rock by erosion: nowadays they think that necessity is in [i.e., depends on] a
things generation.
It doesnt seem important to decide between these two readings, since in either event it will come out true (at least by Aristotles lights) both that these people

think of necessity like the person in the upcoming analogy, and that they regard
what is necessary as being determined by the generation which results in it.

.. Having a necessary nature could mean having brute tendencies, could

mean having natural features that are required.
, ,
, ,

: Similarly in all other things which involve that for the sake
of which: the product cannot come to be without things which have a necessary nature, but it is not due to these (except as its material); it comes to be for
an end. (-)
e wall has been generalized to , everything in
which there is goal-directedness, and the stone, earth and wood have been generalized to , things whose nature is necessary. Its
reasonably easy to see what the former class is: it is the class of things that have
functions. It is not so clear what Aristotle means by things whose nature is
necessary.
I think there are two likely interpretations. One is to take as
meaning needed or required. Something with a given function cannot come into
being or exist without those constituents whose nature is required in order for it
to be suited to perform the function. at xs nature is required means, I think,
that something with xs natural properties is required. e other interpretation is
to understand as having a similar force to the phrase we
saw in GA II., . at is, the phrase
conveys that the thing has dispositions which are not for the sake of the activities
which are their exercise, and that the activities themselves are not performed for

. -. e text reads, [dat. part.]

.

the sake of anything. We can call such a disposition a brute or aimless tendency,
and such an activity an aimless activity.
On the rst interpretation, Aristotle seems to commit himself to the following
claim. If X is something that has a function, and X requires something with Ys
natural properties in order to be suited to perform its function, then Y is not a
moving cause of Xs generation. is is a somewhat worrisome claim for him to
make, in that it seems to be contradicted by the discussion in GA II. of the order
in which an organisms parts are generated. ere Aristotle says that some of an
animals organic parts ( , i.e., parts which serve as tools or instruments for the animal) are also generative () of the animal hence these
parts must form earlier in time than the others. is seems to imply that there
are parts which are both required for the animal to perform its function and are
among the moving causes of the animals generation. However, we might be able
to smooth over the worry. On the one hand, we could simply take this as one
more sign of increased sophistication in GA over the Physics, resulting from Aristotles empirical investigations into biology. On the other hand, we might reconcile the texts in this way. e parts of an animal which on the GA II. story are
generative, we might suggest, will be those parts in which the animals form primarily resides. (Aristotle says that the rst part to form is , , which I nd obscure but it seems that this part enjoys some sort
of primacy among parts; he also mentions at that this rst part is the heart,
which we know is the seat of perception.) ese parts are not merely needed or re-

. Cooper (b), p. sides emphatically with this line of interpretation, citing PA III.,
- for support.
. GA II., -. - reads,
, .
. Or we could suppose the GA presents a more nuanced version of Aristotles view because it is
designed to be taught later in the curriculum.

quired, they are actually essential to the animal. In the Physics passage, we
would conclude, means required but not essential.
On the second interpretation, Aristotle is committed instead to this claim: If X
is something that has a function, and Ys active powers are brute tendencies, then
Y is not a moving cause of Xs generation. is claim too conicts with GA, but it
is a conict weve already noticed and oered to explain.

.. Interpreting the last sentence of our portion

Apparently, judging from the particle and the overall tone of the sentence, this
is meant to be a summary and conclusion of the discussion so far. But it is remarkably obscure what the sentence actually says. Various readings are possible
both of the clauses taken individually and of the logical connections among them.
Let me briey sketch the salient possibilities, and then explain the interpretation I
prefer. e sentence contains four clauses, so I will label them to and use letters
to label alternative readings of a given clause.

What is necessary is hypothetically necessary,

but or and
.

what is necessary does not occupy the role of an end. (Understanding a verb such as .)

For
.
a.

what is necessary is located in the matter (e.g., it may be necessary

that a certain kind of matter be present, or that the matter have a
certain feature, or that the matter undergo this or that change).

. Cooper (b), pp. - argues for a distinction like this between parts being essential to
an organism and its being merely a sine qua non for the organisms existence or proper
functioning.

b.

what is necessary is what depends on or is determined by the matter. (Taking in to have the sense it has in e aairs of the
Greeks are in the king of Persia.)

.
a.

e aim of a thing is stated in its account (e.g., the denition of an

ax states that an ax is for splitting and planing wood).

b.

e aim of a thing depends on its account, in the sense that the extent to which it succeeds in achieving its aim (performing its
) depends on how well it instantiates its form: a well-formed
ax chops better than an ill-formed ax, etc. (Take account as
roughly equivalent to form.)

c.

e aim of a process of generation is located in the account. (Take

account to mean roughly form, as in (b), and the clause
to say that generation occurs for the sake of realizing a form.)

In addition to the choices already indicated, we should note some uncertainty

as to what necessary means in : for example, it might mean required, or it
might mean necessary in the sense connected with the sort of anti-teleological
theorizing Aristotle is opposing, or it might be meant in a broad sense encompassing the other two. It is also unclear what the relation between and is meant to
be: does deny a natural alternative to the view expressed in (as in, its a banana, not an apple), or does it rather express some limitation or qualication on
the view expressed in (as in, its a fruit, but not a banana)? And how close is the
connection meant to be between and ? Do they together express a single
thought about a contrast between matter and form, with that single thought supporting (via the in ) what has gone before? Or does the attach to
alone, with then forming a separate little coda?
Here is how I prefer to take it. When Aristotle says that what is necessary in
nature is hypothetically necessary, he means simply that it is conditionally necessary. is leaves it open that it can be conditionally necessary for an end to be
achieved: one might think that necessarily, if the bear is hairy then it will stay
warm, or that necessarily, if the egg is fertilized a chicken will result. us the rst

clause does not entail the second. e second rather expresses an additional qualication on the extent to which necessity obtains in nature, i.e., that ends are not
achieved necessarily (not even with conditional necessity). e third clause
supports the second by saying that what is necessary is located in a things matter
(reading a). As the fourth clause makes clear, neither the existence of a things
matter nor any state or change of that matter constitutes on its own the achievement of any of the things ends, nor the achievement of the thing itself as end of its
generation. us the third and fourth clause jointly entail that what is necessary in
nature is never the achievement of an end. e fourth clause is perhaps deliberately ambiguous between the three readings I mentioned; I believe they are all true
by Aristotles lights, and they all serve to drive a wedge between a things matter,
on the one hand, and the aims of the thing and of its generation, on the other.
My reading of this sentence diers importantly from what I take to be the
standard reading, as expressed for example in Rosss commentary. On Rosss reading, and form a dichotomy, which is in fact the same dichotomy as the one he started out with between and . Necessary means necessary if a certain desirable result is to be
produced; necessary and necessary both mean being a result
which must follow from certain conditions. I explained in section why I dont
think and mean what Ross requires them to mean.
I do think the remark is directed (in part) against the sort of
view illustrated by the wall story, but this does not come as easy as Ross makes it
sound: means end in the sense of a goal; it does not mean a mere result.
us if not as an end is indeed intended as a rejection of the sort of view illustrated by the wall, it is curiously phrased. On the view Aristotle is rejecting, what

. Of course the end of one thing or process might be necessary conditional on the achievement
of some further end; but then the rst end is not necessary , as an end.
. Ross (), p.
. Ross (), p.

is necessary is not a , and indeed Aristotle rst rejected it exactly by insisting

that the wall has come to be , for the sake of something. I think the best
way to understand whats going on here is that Aristotle is already presupposing
aspects of his own view in expressing his objection to a conicting view. e
thought is something like, those things which as we know are goals, do not
exist or come about from necessity. In fact Aristotle already did something like
this at -, when he generalized his discussion of the wall to , to all other things in which there is the for-thesake-of-something. Strictly speaking, what he said there is true even by the lights
of the theorists he is criticizing, if they think there are no things for the sake of
anything. But surely what he was doing was to pick out the class of things which
by his lights involve teleology, and oppose what others say about the members of
that class. In part he is doing the same thing now. I take it he is also saying more,
however; he is not only denying necessitation by the exercise of brute tendencies,
but also necessitation of ends by proper Aristotelian causes. It is not necessary
that if a doctor decides to heal, then the patient will be healthy.

. Is it necessary that if a doctor exercises the art of medicine then the patient will be healthy?
Well, since As healing B is identical to Bs being healed by A, it is at least necessary that if a doctor
heals a patient then the patient is healed, and so that the patient will be healthier. If to exercise the
art of medicine just is to heal someone, then its necessary that if a doctor exercises the art of medicine then the patient will be healthier. Since I dont know whether exercising the art of medicine is
meant to be the same as healing, I thought it safer to give my example in terms of deciding rather
than doing.

CHAPTER BACKWARD- AND FORWARD-FLOWING NECESSITY

e simplest thing to suppose about hypothetical necessity is that it is conditional

necessity. I should say right o, however, that I do not think it applies to every
case in which a statement of the form If... then... is necessarily true; for Aristotles way of thinking about necessity generally is somewhat dierent and narrower
than ours. He does not seem to treat it as a property of semantic items such as
sentences or propositions; nor will he apply it to just any state of aairs which a
proposition might express. For Aristotle, I think, necessity applies in the rst instance to the being or coming into being of a thing: its being or coming into being
full stop, or else its being or coming to be F. A star necessarily exists, is necessarily
bright, and necessarily moves through its orbit. Bringing this to the conditional
case, we have an instance of hypothetical necessity wherever it is necessary that if
X is (or is F, or comes into being, or comes to be F) then Y is (or is G, or comes
into being, or comes to be G).

On my account, the being or coming into being of just about anything you can
think of is hypothetically necessary: there is something that cant be or come into
being unless it is or comes to be. We could add restrictions. Perhaps something is
hypothetically necessary only if it is armed in the consequent of a necessary
conditional statement whose antecedent is true. Or perhaps there must be a particular kind of reason why the conditional necessity obtains: it must be that what

is referred to in the consequent is a condition sine qua non for the realization of
an end which is what is referred to in the antecedent.
Rather than adopting these restrictions, I want to emphasize the gap between
simply being hypothetically necessary and being due to hypothetical necessity; the
former is common, but the latter is rare. It is the latter that we and Aristotle are
interested in, and this seems to be enough to account for why Aristotle deploys
the concept of hypothetical necessity in the limited way he does. us, I say,
ebes being north of Megara is hypothetically necessary given that it is north of
Plataea and Plataea is north of Megara; but intuitively it is not because of this
necessity that ebes is north of Megara, and so we should not expect Aristotle to
mention it or cases like it. Of course, I am not proposing that being necessary is
some further way of being caused beyond Aristotles ocial four. If the necessity is
necessity for the realization of an end, then it is a case of nal causation: a case of
something being or coming about for the sake of the end.
I have no developed account of what it is to be due to hypothetical necessity, if
only because I have no developed account of what it is to be or come to be because
of an end. In Aristotles central cases of natural teleology, we may nd it deeply
mysterious what is supposed to be involved in somethings being or coming about
because it is necessary for the realization of an endespecially given that there
are no agents or intentions in the picture. is chapter is only a preparation for
tackling that question. But I think we have clear negative intuitions in some cases

. Cooper (b), pp. ,

. For a clear case of necessity referred to as something explanatory, see GA I., :
since nature does everything either because of necessity or because of what is better. e context makes it clear that with necessity
Aristotle has in mind being necessary for some end (in this particular case, reproduction). Also
see De Somno ch. , -, which I discussed in section ... ere, moreover, it is necessary
gures in a list of the causes of sleep (Aristotle may again have in mind being necessary for an end,
cf. p. ). Aristotle was following a long tradition of explaining things by showing how they are
necessary, which we see for example in the Timaeus use of necessity as one of two causes, the other being (cf. .), and which goes back to the Presocratics.
. Pace Cooper (b), p.

(it is not true that: I am in the library because it is necessary that if I am in the library then I am in the library), and we can at least see our way to a negative verdict in others. I have hope that we can pin down an appropriate sense of because
which will exclude the various instances of conditional necessity which Aristotle
must recognize but which do not involve necessity for the realization of an end.
But there is one sort of instance of conditional necessity which does not involve ends, and which Aristotle surely would have considered explanatory, if he
thought it ever obtained. is would be the sort of instance in which one thing
necessarily follows something else which causes it; for instance if it were necessary
that if a squid gets frightened then it will emit ink. In the next section I will give
reason to think that Aristotle did not believe there to be any instances of such forward-owing conditional necessity; though he does use the word necessity in
connection with causation of later items by earlier ones, his usage in these cases
does not implicate genuine necessity.
Before I go on to do that, let me make two last remarks about being due to necessity in the end-derived kind of case. First, it isnt clear whether, in order for
something to come about because of hypothetical necessity, the end in question
must actually be realized. If a builder lays a foundation for a house, but then is
called away and does not nish the house, did he lay the foundation from necessity? It seems plausible that he did; that for something to come about because it is
necessary for the realization of an end, it is only required that the end be in some
sense active as an end (perhaps, that it is to be realized, whether or not it actually
will be realized).
Second, we should note that it is not sucient for something to come about
because of hypothetical necessity that the end in question is realized. Suppose that
Ruth has invited Betty over for dinner, Betty will be arriving aer dark, and it will
be impossible for her to nd the door safely unless the porch light is on. Ruth forgets to turn on the light, but luckily her dog brushes against the switch so as to
turn it on. In this case the light is not switched on because it is necessary, nor for

the sake of Bettys safe arrival, though it is still true that it is necessary for the light
to be switched on if she will arrive safely, and that she does arrive safely.
Now on to the question of forward-owing necessity.

Aristotle makes liberal use of the phrase from necessity ( ) in the biological explanations of Parts of Animals. He says that, while some of the serum in
the body is on its way to being concocted into blood, other serum is present from
necessity as a result of bloods decomposition (). Our heads grow a lot of
hair from necessity because mans head is especially moist, as well as sutured
(). Eyelashes are produced from necessity out of moist secretions where
small blood vessels end in the eyelids (). Deers horns fall o from necessity due to their weightdeers horns, unlike other animals, are not hollow
(). As to the formation of horns, it is explained that large animals have extra
earthy stu, some of which ows to their upper parts from necessity and can be
made use of by nature either for teeth, tusks, or horns (). e kidneys are
the fattiest of the viscera; they become fatty from necessity due to their ltering
residue out of the blood (). Many animals discharge urine from necessity
when they are frightened; in squids and octopuses this reaction is made use of for
protection, and they discharge ink (). And so on.
It should be clear enough from the nature of the examples that the necessity
appealed to is not a backwards-owing, goal-derived one. In case further conrmation is needed, we can note that Aristotle describes many things, including
most of the examples just given, as being on the one hand from necessity, but also,
and in contrast, for the sake of something. Also, some of the examples involve the
putting to use of a residue ()squids ink is such a residueand
residues are said explicitly not to be typically produced for a goal but only from
necessity: sometimes nature even makes use of residues for some benet, yet it is

not on this account necessary to seek what something is for in every case; on the
contrary, when certain things are such as they are, many other things happen
from necessity.
e workings of this necessity are not described in much detail; it may be
helpful to oer a (perforce speculative) elaboration of one of Aristotles examples.
I will take his treatment of breathing, which he introduces to illustrate the claim
that things in nature oen happen both from necessity and for the sake of something. A diculty is that the third of the three sentences devoted to the example is
corrupt. e reading of the passage in our best manuscript could be rendered:
For it is necessary for the hot to go out and go back in again when it comes
into collision, and for the air to ow in. is much is necessary. But the entry
of the outside air in the cooling of the interior resisting heat is for the sake of
this saying something similar.
e standard editions delete the last few words, from for the sake of ( )
on, yielding such translations as and as the internal heat resists in the process of
cooling, the entrance and exit of the external air occur. is is probably the
best that can be done, but that last deleted phrase is tantalizing; the context leads
us, aer all, to expect some description of the purpose served by breathing, and it
looks as though the sentence in its original formif the is genuine
might have oered just such a description.
At any rate, I take the breathing mechanism described to work as follows, with
arbitrary numbers supplied to aid the exposition. Say we start with four liters of
cool air in the body. is air heats up and doubles in volume to eight liters. As the

. PA -, tr. Lennox () with slight alteration.

, ,
.
. PA -, manuscript E, my translation.
, . .
.
. us Ogle in Barnes (). Ogle reads aer .
. For modestly dierent accounts, see Balme () and Lennox () ad loc., and Cooper
(b), p. .

air expands, it must begin to ow out; and having worked up a ow it proceeds

past the point of equilibriumlet us say ve liters ow out instead of just four,
leaving three liters of warm air in the body. At this point the outer air is over-compressed and the inner air is under-compressed, so air now recoils back inward
(this corresponds to go back in again when it comes into collision, ). ere is already room for one liter of fresh air from outside,
but in addition the warm air inside cools down due to contact or mixture with the
incoming fresh air (maybe just from owing, also?) and so contracts further.
Cooling fully, it will halve in volume to one and a half liters and so make room for
two and a half liters of fresh air. Now, again, there are four liters of cool air in the
body and the cycle begins again.
is account appeals simply to raw behavioral tendencies of air: it expands
when it gets hotter, it shrinks when it cools, it ows and bounces. As others have
remarked, the explanation here is very much in the style of Aristotles materialist
predecessors and opponents. I think it also follows their usage regarding the
word necessity. is usage conveys an element of compulsion, but does not seem
to have been tied to the strict impossibility of being otherwise; Aristotle was the
rst to dene necessity in terms of this (at, e.g., Metaphysics . a). Necessity was previously thought of, it seems, as a kind of blind force or impulse, rather a
disorderly one than something subject to laws, and perhaps one which could be
overridden or fail to produce its normal eect. is kind of necessity was fre-

. Cooper (b), p.
. Cornford (), p. : Necessity, in fact, did not carry with it the associations of law and
order, at any rate in the earlier phases of atomism.
. According to Cornford, p. , necessity in the Timaeus is not inexorably determined, but
open to the persuasion of Reason. Simplicius, in his commentary on Aristotles De Caelo, quotes a
passage from Aristotles On Democritus which suggests that (according to Democritus) one necessity might overpower another:
,

.
ey cling to each other and cohere just so long as no stronger necessity seizes

quently associated with chance, certainly in Platos and Aristotles criticisms of

mechanistic cosmology, but perhaps also by the mechanists themselves.
In short, to attribute Bs occurrence to necessity, in this sense, is not to say that
there was some condition A such that it was necessary (in our sense) that if A obtained then B would occur. It is simply to say that B was a result of aimless forces
and impulses. ese forces and impulses must exhibit some regularities, to be
sure, if they can be used to explain such stable processes as breathing; but this explanatory use does not require the regularities to be strictly necessary and
exceptionless.
We saw in Physics II. that Aristotle describes theorists as willing to attribute
something to necessity if they believe it results from the way its ingredients are
naturally such as () to behave. It appeared that a crucial aspect of these
theorists view was that in behaving as they naturally do, the items in question are
manifesting completely aimless dispositions. eir tendencies to rise or fall, for
example, seemed to be regarded as just brute features. So perhaps in one sense
of the word, to be necessary just is to consist in, or result from, the exercise of
aimless dispositions.
Mechanistic necessity is not really necessity, on Aristotles considered opinion,
and we should not expect to nd him referring to it in his more philosophical
texts, except where he is particularly engaged with the views of his predecessors.
In a largely empirical work such as Parts of Animals, on the other hand, which

on to them and scatters them apart (CAG ... Tr. Furley (), p. ).
. See for example Physics II. -. See Furley (), p. , on Democritus.
. Some theorists may have thought that our explanations hit rock bottom once we identify
how something naturally or always behaves. ere is a very interesting passage in GA II.,
, in which Aristotle rebukes Democritus and unnamed others for thinking that to say it
always happens this way is to oer a principle (). Democritus argues, he says, that what is always is boundless, and what is boundless has no beginning (), hence to seek a cause of what
always happens is in vain. In another passage, Physics VIII., , Aristotle criticizes Empedocles for saying things like it naturally happens thus, and we must regard that as a principle.

must have incorporated results from many other peoples investigations, it would
have been natural to adopt some of the language of those others work.
When Aristotle writes that a mans head grows hair from necessity, or that a
squid discharges ink from necessity, I do not think he means that these things
are genuinely necessary. ey are not necessary simply and without qualication,
and neither do they necessarily follow from some preceding condition or conditions. My reason for holding that Aristotle did not mean simple necessity is
straightforward: he holds that since what necessarily is cannot fail to be (and what
necessarily comes to be cannot fail to come to be), it must always be (or always be
coming to be). And he must surely have remarked that no mans head grows
hair, nor no squid discharges ink, always and for eternity.
at he did not mean conditional necessity is harder to establish. He makes
remarks in other texts which seem to deny that there can ever be necessitation of
something later by something earlier. Some scholars suggest that Aristotle wavered on this point, and that our text is simply inconsistent with those others;
but if we can plausibly interpret it so as to agree with them, as I have suggested we
can, then that seems preferable.
One fairly clear denial of forward-owing conditional necessity occurs in On
Generation and Corruption II.. e context is a discussion of whether anything
comes into being with unqualied necessity (to which the answer is yes, there are
eternal, cyclical processes of generation which enjoy unqualied necessity). On
the way to developing his answer, Aristotle writes:
If it is necessary for the earlier to come to be if the later will be, such as if a
house, a foundation, and if this, clay, then is it also necessary for a house to
come to be if a foundation has come to be? (-)

. GC -
. Williams () ad GC II.. notes the possibility, though he is in agreement with me
about necessity in the biological works. He thinks he nds real forward-owing necessity in
Meta E..

His answer is No, unless it is independently unconditionally necessary for the later element to come to be (-).
Now this denial is of limited scope. It does not entail that there is never forward-owing conditional necessity, only that there is no such necessity in certain
cases. Where A is earlier than B, if B is contingent and B necessitates A, then A
does not necessitate B. (By A necessitates B I mean necessarily if A occurs then
B occurs.) I believe it is possible to extract a more general denial of forward-owing necessity from the passage, but this requires a rather careful reconstruction of
the extended argument from which I have extracted my quotation. For now let
us just note this. e initial statement of the question to be considered is whether
there is anything which necessarily will be, and one would expect a positive
answer in two cases: not only if the coming to be of some future thing is necessary
without qualication, but also if there is some instance of forward-owing conditional necessity whose antecedent is now satised. us, if blushing necessarily
followed the drinking of red wine, and I had just now drunk a glass of red wine, it
would be natural to say that I will necessarily blush. But the latter sort of case is
given no serious consideration at all, which suggests that when he wrote this passage Aristotle took it as already settled that there is no forward-owing conditional necessity.
It may be worth noting that Philoponus, in his commentary on the present
passage, takes Aristotles denial of forward-owing necessity to be comprehensive. He oers several putative counterexamples to what he takes to be Aristotles thesis: cases in which, he believes, a later item necessarily follows an earlier
item, but is not of itself simply necessary. He does not limit his interpretation of
the thesis, nor his putative counterexamples, to cases in which the earlier item is

. Charles (), in contrast, nds that the passage on balance supports the view that there is
forward-owing necessity.
. GC , my translation.
. CAG , p.

necessitated by the later one. e examples are: emaciation follows lack of food;
slow digestion follows overeating, and also follows worries or sleeplessness; a
bruise follows a blow to the esh; mud follows when water is poured onto earth;
death follows cutting of the throat.
Suppose we stick for now with the limited denial explicitly given in GC II.:
where A is earlier than B, if B is contingent and B necessitates A, then A does not
necessitate B. Just from this we may be able to conclude that the mechanistic necessity of the Parts of Animals does not involve genuine conditional necessity, if
we can see that some cases in which A is said to result in B from necessity are in
fact cases where B is contingent and B necessitates A. So. A predator is approaching a squid: this would be a good time (good for the squid, that is) to produce a
cloud of ink. It has a bladderful of ink at the ready, but certain things must necessarily happen if that ink is to be jetted out. Let us suppose it is necessary that if the
squid produces a jet of ink, then it rst allows its bladder aperture to open. And
indeed, the squid catches sight of the predator, in an access of fear it relaxes the
muscle at the bladder aperture, the aperture opens, and ink jets out, forming a
cloud which distracts the predator while the squid darts away. Saved!
Now Aristotle writes that squids discharge ink from necessity when frightened. So, to repeat my toy account of ink emission, the squids becoming frightened results from necessity in its relaxing the muscle at the bladder aperture,
this results from necessity in the opening of the aperture, and this results from
necessity in a jet of ink. But the jet of ink is contingent, and it necessitates the
prior opening of the bladder aperture. erefore, by our thesis from GC II., the
opening of the bladder aperture does not necessitate the jet of ink. e former
results in the latter from necessity, but it is not necessary that if the former occurs then the latter occurs. Hence, when Aristotle in the Parts of Animals describes something as resulting from mechanistic necessity, we should not take him
to mean that its occurrence is governed by genuine forward-owing conditional
necessity.

We could run this argument, maybe even more convincingly, with other
examples as well. Perhaps the growth of hair on the head necessitates the very
presence of moisture which is said to lead from necessity to the hairs growth.
Perhaps an inhalation necessitates a prior exhalation, or an exhalation necessitates
a prior inhalation (does a newborn infant inhale rst or exhale rst, on Aristotles
view?), where each also results in the other from necessity. If the later thing, the
extra hair or the in-breath, necessitates the earlier one, then the earlier does not
necessitate the later, even if it does result in it from mechanistic necessity.
Another point. ere is a remark in PA about eyelashes which is somewhat
ambiguous, but can be read so as to entail that something which comes to be
from necessity may nevertheless admit of not coming to be. Aristotle writes that
eyelashes form from necessity unless some function of nature hinders this with a
view to another use. It is unclear what sort of hindrance Aristotle has in mind.
He might just mean that some organisms have an unusual bodily conguration
around the eyelids, such that for these organisms the operation of mechanistic necessity does not lead to the formation of eyelashes. is involves a change in the
initial conditions, not an exception to the normal working of necessity itself. On
the other hand, Aristotle may mean that in some cases, if it is suciently better
for an organism that the moisture do something other than become eyelashes,
then in spite of necessity the other, better thing will happen. is second interpretation does entail that mechanistic necessity is not genuine necessity.
Finally, let us consider the phenomena directly. Although Aristotle appears to
have held that each stage of respiration follows mechanically from the prior stage,
it is very unlikely that he thought that given one exhalation the following exhalation is genuinely necessary. Every animal dies, sometimes suddenly and without
warning. So at the very least, he must have understood that any process can be in-

. PA II., -. ,
,
.

terruptedin the case of breathing or discharging ink, the animal in question

might be eaten, beheaded, squashed, or whatever, before its next exhalation or
discharge respectively. If the animal dies, it will no longer heat the air in its lungs,
and so it will not exhale again. Alternatively, something less drastic might happen:
a gust of wind, or a hand placed over the mouth and nose, might prevent (at least
for a while) air from escaping the lungs. If the animal is a human, it can hold its
breath.
I suspect that Aristotle further held that any process might just give out and
fail on its own, without external interference and perhaps due to no particular
cause at all. He seems to have this in mind in the following remark from the
Metaphysics:
e thing must be determined as occurring either always or for the most part,
e.g. that honey-water is useful for a patient in a fever is true for the most part.
But one will not be able to state when that which is contrary to this happens,
e.g. on the day of new moon; for then it will be so on the day of new moon
either always or for the most part; but the accidental is contrary to this. (Meta
E., -, tr. Ross in Barnes ())
What this indicates is that in at least some kinds of circumstances, things can
simply fail to work without explanation. Sometimes an administration of honeywater does not help a patient, although there is no F such that the administration
is F and administrations that are F always or for the most part fail to help the patient. It is not said that in the normal case honey-water relieves fever from necessity, so the passage does not settle the present question my way. But given that
things that come about from mechanistic necessity can fail to come about by being interrupted, it seems plausible that they can also fail to come about spontaneously, given that Aristotle does countenance spontaneous breakdown in other
contexts.

. -

I think it is very likely, then, that Aristotles use of the word necessity to characterize causal processes in Parts of Animals is not meant to implicate genuine necessity; and indeed that he did not believe there to be any instances at all of forward-owing conditional necessity in nature. But this may lead us to wonder
whether his examples of backward-owing hypothetical necessity are instances of
genuine necessity either. For there are broad worries as to whether one can coherently maintain that there is conditional necessity in one temporal direction and
not in the other. In this section I will try to answer a logical worry, and in the next
a rather vaguer, more intuitive one.
First let us set aside two sorts of necessary conditional statements which pretty
clearly should not fall within the scope of Aristotles denial of forward-owing
conditional necessity. One is exemplied by if Smith goes to the well today, then
two plus two will equal four tomorrow; or if Smith goes to the well today, then
the prime mover will exist tomorrow. In these cases the consequent is not merely
conditionally necessary, but necessary without qualication.
A second sort of statement to set aside is exemplied by if at noon there is a
spark which will be followed aer a minute by a bang, then at one minute past
noon there is a bang. is is a necessary conditional statement whose antecedent
is about an earlier time than its consequent is, but the antecedent is not true just
in virtue of what happens at that earlier time.
Let me then oer an initial (still untenable) candidate for the view I want to
attribute to Aristotle, that there is backward-owing conditional necessity but no
forward-owing conditional necessity. To state the view, it will be useful to have
some notation for somethings being the case at a time. Let p(t) stand for a
proposition that is true or false just in virtue of the state of the world at t, i.e., in
virtue of (roughly) the objects temporally present at t, the intrinsic properties they

bear at t, and the relations they stand in to each other at t. I hope the idea is intuitive, whether or not its expression is technically perfect. We want to include
propositions such as that Jacob Rosen is seated at t, or that there are ve benches
in the garden at t. We want to exclude propositions such as that the rst ower of
the season blossomed at t (its truth would involve the absence of ower-blossomings earlier in the season), that a future father was born at t (its truth would involve a childbirth aer t), that t is a time one minute before a bang (its truth
would involve a bang aer t). e rst candidate view, then, is this:
() ere are pairs of contingent propositions p(t) and q(t), with t
earlier than t, such that necessarily if q(t) then p(t), but there are
no such pairs of contingent propositions such that necessarily if
p(t) then q(t).
In plainer English, the view is that somethings being the case at a later time
can necessitate somethings being the case at an earlier time, but not the other way
round.
at this view cannot be right is clear enough. We need simply recall that a
conditional statement and its contrapositive are logically equivalent; hence, necessarily, one is true if and only if the other is true; hence if one is necessarily true, so
is the other. Now consider a pair of propositions p(t) and q(t), with t earlier than
t, such that necessarily if q(t) then p(t). For example, let q(t) be the proposition
that there is a house here at noon Tuesday, and p(t) the proposition that there are
foundations here at noon Monday. Contraposing, we can conclude that necessarily if ~(p(t)) then ~(q(t)). In our example, necessarily if it is not the case that
(there are foundations here at noon Monday) then it is not the case that (there is a
house here at noon Tuesday). Finally, we need to note that if a proposition is true
(false) just in virtue of the state of the world at t, then its negation is false (true)
just in virtue of the state of the world at t. is means we can strip o the outermost brackets, yielding: necessarily if ~p(t) then ~q(t). It is necessary that if there
. Lewis (), p. oers a sketch of the notion I am aer.

were no foundations here at noon Monday, then there is not a house here at noon
Tuesday. From the assumption that somethings being the case at a later time necessitates somethings being the case at an earlier time, we have deduced that
somethings being the case at an earlier time necessitates somethings being the
case at a later time. View (), the view that there are necessary conditionals of the
rst kind but not of the second, is inconsistent.
Fortunately there is no pressure to believe that () captures Aristotles view.
How can we rene our thesis of the temporal asymmetry of necessity, so as to
bring it closer to what Aristotle might have intended? We might try to exploit either of two dierences between our statement of backwards-owing conditional
necessity and its contrapositive. e rst has to do with changes. I stated the
example in terms of the existence of a house and the existence of foundations, but
its most interesting application is of course when a house is being built. e statement of necessity entails that the completion of a house-building must be preceded by the completion of a foundation-laying; a later change necessitates an earlier
one. In the other direction we nd only that the absence of change is necessitated:
if foundations have not been laid by noon Monday, there will not be a housebuilding completed by noon Tuesday. (Of course, the foundations could be destroyed at noon Monday, and if there is a house on them, that will be destroyed
too: a change. But in the nature of the case, the house will be destroyed at least as
soon as the foundations are; the necessitated change, the house-destruction, is not
later than the necessitating change, the foundation-destruction.)
So perhaps we should try out a view like this. Where c is a change (type of
change?), let C(t) be the proposition that c is completed at t.
() ere are pairs of changes c and d, and times t earlier than t, such
that necessarily if D(t) then C(t), but no such pairs of changes and
times such that necessarily if C(t) then D(t).
In plainer English, the view is that a later change can necessitate an earlier
change, but not the other way round.

Putting change at the focus of the view can be reasonably well motivated, if we
think that the aim of natural science is to understand what happens in nature, and
that what happen are events, and that events are or are constituted by changes.
is is not quite right, since Aristotle employs hypothetical necessity not just in
the explanation of changes but also to explain things like the having of eyelids.
Still, it might be thought that there is only a question of earlier and later between
pairs of changes: a man has protection for his eyes not before or aer he has eyelids, but when and exactly when he has them. Even this is not correct, however;
there are statements of hypothetical necessity in which the antecedent refers to the
maintenance of a condition (not a change), and the consequent to some earlier activity. Worse, such a statement, when contraposed, delivers a description of a
change as necessitated. For example, eating food is necessary for life and health.
Necessarily, if Smith is alive and healthy now, then he has eaten adequately
through the course of the previous week, let us say. By contraposition, necessarily,
if Smith goes without food for a week, he will subsequently fall ill or die. (He may
fast all the way up to his illness or death, but I believe there will be a prior time at
which, even should he then resume eating, he will still sicken or die. Fasting up to
that prior time is what necessitates the outcome, so the outcome really is subsequent to, rather than temporally overlapping, what necessitates it.) Falling ill and
dying are, of course, changes.
View (), then, is not a plausible reconstruction of Aristotles view. But there is
another obvious asymmetry between our statement of hypothetical necessity and
its contrapositive. e one asserts a necessary connection between there being one
thing and there being another; the other asserts a necessary connection between
there not being one thing and there not being another. is is the asymmetry we
need to exploit. I said above that an instance of conditional necessity for Aristotle
is one in which it is necessary that if X is (or is F, or comes into being, or comes to

. PA I., ; Meta V., -

be F) then Y is (or is G, or comes into being, or comes to be G). Cases in which it

is necessary that if some condition obtains then something will not be, or will not
be F, or will not come into being, or will not come to be F, do not count.
My proposal for Aristotles view (this is view ()) is that a later instance of being or coming to be can necessitate an earlier instance of being or coming to be,
but not the other way round.
For this to help, we will need to rely on a distinction between positive predicates and privative ones, and specify that the predicates in my formula for conditional necessityat least the one in the consequentare restricted to the positive.
So it is necessary that if I dont eat I will get sick or die, but I want to say that sickness and death are mere privations of health and life, respectively, and that this
therefore does not count as an instance of forward-owing conditional necessity.
What is necessitated is, in real terms, a non-being or ceasing to be (namely, of
health or life) rather than a being or coming to be.
We may feel uneasy about this distinction between being and privation, but
Aristotle did make it. A quick search of the Metaphysics nds him noting that in
the list of contraries one of the two columns is privative, and classing as privations such things as: inequality, unlikeness, and vice; nudity, toothlessness, and
black; rest; cold, black, and darkness; darkness and disease. We can use the distinction to handle three of Philoponuss proposed counterexamples, if emaciation,
slow digestion, and death are privations. (ey are all evils, at any rate; and bad
things seem to go in the privative column.) e cases may be derivable from contraposition of backward-owing hypothetical necessity: certain conditions are
necessary for plumpness (or health in respect of weight), for good digestion, for
life. If one doesnt eat, or again if one overeats or worries excessively or lies awake

. Meta .
. Meta . -; . -; . ; . -; . -
. As to the other two, I am inclined simply to deny that a bruise necessarily follows a blow, and
that mud necessarily forms when water is poured onto earth.

at night, or again if ones throat is severed, one fails to meet at least one of these
conditions, and so suers the corresponding privation.
In a statement of backward-owing hypothetical necessity, the antecedent will
refer to somethings being or coming to be. (Even if this is not a formal requirement on the antecedent in a statement of Aristotelian conditional necessity, these
cases involve ends, and ends are good, and goodness is associated with being
rather than privation.) When the statement is contraposed, the result will have a
consequent which refers to somethings not being or not coming to be; and so this
contrapositive will not be a statement of Aristotelian conditional necessity. us
contraposition does not get us from a statement of backward-owing to a statement of forward-owing conditional necessity.

It is logically acceptable to hold that there is backward-owing conditional necessity but no forward-owing conditional necessity. e nal thing I want to do is
try to get some intuitive feeling for how this works. For even if there is no contradiction in the general claim, we might get worried about the particular instances
of hypothetical necessity to which Aristotle appeals. Can these be genuine cases of
conditional necessity, given the contingency we are supposing he assigns to forward-owing causation?
As far as I have found, Aristotle gives only two worked out and explicitly labeled examples of hypothetical necessity. One is that an axe must be made of iron
or bronze; the other is that if there will be a house there must come to be foundations. In the rst case an artifacts having a feature is necessary, and the necessitating condition (there being an axe) is simultaneous with what is necessitated
(the axes being iron or bronze). In the second case somethings coming to be is

. GC ; PA and Physics .

necessary, and the necessitating condition (the coming into being of a house) is
later than what is necessitated (the coming into being of foundations). I will say
something about these two cases, and then go on to consider parallel cases involving not artifacts but organisms.

.. Simultaneous necessitation: artifacts

Since the axe must cleave, it is necessary for it to be hard, and if hard, made
of bronze or iron. is necessity corresponds to certain brute tendencies of
materials. Consider a so metal such as gold: when a wedge of gold is struck
against a piece of wood, the gold will get smushed rather than the wood getting
split. We may suppose that something similar is true of every other material besides iron and bronze, or at least every other material which was known to
Aristotle.
But if I am right that there is no forward-owing necessity, it is not strictly
necessary that if a golden axe is swung against a log then the log will remain unsplit. From time to time, by some uke, a golden axe might split a log. Does this
mean that it is not necessary for an axe to be made of iron or bronze? No, for not
everything with which anyone ever splits wood is an axe. An axe is a tool for splitting wood, it is something which reliably splits wood when struck against it. Only
something made of hard metal does this; a golden axe could only split wood as a
matter of chance, and so it would not be an axe (or it would be an axe only
homonymously).
A tool is, in part, something which reliably performs a function. us even
though the regularities associated with mechanistic necessity are not perfectly determinate and exceptionless, there can still be genuinely necessary conditions on

. PA -

the existence of a tool. Something failing to meet the condition might, as an exception, do what the tool does, but it cannot be such as to do it reliably.

.. Backwards owing necessitation: artifacts

In the example of the axe, that which is necessitated is simultaneous with that
which necessitates it. In the house example, it is priorthere must, Aristotle says,
come to be foundations before there is a house; and it is harder to see whether
this non-simultaneous, backward-owing necessitation can involve genuine necessity if there is no necessity in the forward-owing direction. e example can
be broken down into two points: () that necessarily if something is a house it has
foundations, and () that foundations must come to be before a house is completed. e rst pointwhich involves simultaneous necessitationis questionable,
but we can grant it. It corresponds to the brute tendency of stone and wood to
move downward, and hence for house-like structures made of them to slope and
collapse if they are on so ground. A foundationless house-like structure might by
chance remain standing for a long time on so ground, but let us say that for
something to be a house it must be something that can be counted on to shelter
and protect, and hence that this house-like structure would not be a house, properly speaking. Let us also say that if a house is anchored into some naturally occurring bedrock, then the bedrock counts as a foundation. Finally, let us stipulate
that huts, tepees, and structures built by any other techniques that allow them to
be stable despite lacking foundations (such as a certain kind of barn) are not
houses. en () is necessary.
Now, whether () is properly necessary depends on what kinds of exceptions
to brute material tendencies are possible, and at what scale. Could the earth under
a house-like structure spontaneously congeal into foundations, rendering the
structure then and only then stable enough to count as a house? Or could a housebuilder one day nd himself, through a spontaneous but extended exception to

the regularities which govern the normal course of things, able to pass through
the oor with his tools and materials, and so lay foundations under an already existing structure? In such scenarios the beginning of the foundations existence
would be simultaneous with, not prior to, the beginning of the houses existence,
and so they represent exceptions to the proposed conditional necessity. Can we
give a plausible story about what exceptions are admitted to the regularities covering mechanistic necessity, such that exceptions of the scale involved in my scenarios are not just overwhelmingly improbable but strictly impossible?
We should probably not think that the sheer number of exceptions in my
scenario makes it impossible. Adding up unlikelihoods will presumably just get us
to something absurdly unlikely, not to an impossibility: if it is possible for a
builder to pass through a oor once, it should be possible for him to pass through
it a hundred times. ere must be some single step in my story which is strictly
impossible.
And there could well be; a lesson of the contraposition discussion is that we
cant go from nothing is necessary to everything is possible. What follows on a
given condition will belong to some restricted range of outcomes; the absence of
necessity requires only that this range have enough disunity about it so as not to
constitute a single, positive something. For example, when a builder steps onto a
oor, it is not necessary that the oor will support him: but perhaps the alternative is merely that it will collapse, not that it will let him through while remaining
intact. e oors supporting the builder or collapsing is already suciently disjunctive so as not to count as a single outcome which will result of necessity.
e general picture is something like this. A given condition has a normal
result. is might or might not be a matter of mechanical necessity: in the case of
a stick catching re it will be, but in the case of a doctor administering treatment,
it presumably will not. Regardless, things can deviate from their normal course in
dierent ways. ere could be a breakdown, where a process which has been initiated simply stops: the ame goes out, the patient remains sick just as he was. Or

there could be a kind of diversion; things do not just give out so that nothing
happens, but they have some non-standard result: the stick, instead of dissolving
into ash, keeps its shape in the form of a hard carbon; the patient doesnt become
healthy but his sickness alters into a dierent one. Greater and greater diversions
from the normal result are not simply less and less likely, but beyond a certain
point they are impossible. Not just anything can result from a given condition.
And conversely, it turns out, not everything is such that there is more than one
condition from which it can result. Because of this last fact, there is backwardowing conditional necessity.

.. Simultaneous necessitation: animals

e case of animals is more dicult than that of artifacts. My argument that

there are genuine conditional necessities for artifacts turned crucially on the point
that a thing does not count as a tool of a certain kind unless it can reliably perform the tools characteristic function. For we are supposing that mechanistic necessity is not strict, and so that the occasional object made from non-standard
materials or in a non-standard way might by chance succeed (even succeed many
times) in doing what the tool is supposed to do. e reliability criterion is needed
to show that such an object is not a tool. But it is far from clear that the identity of
animals is subject to any such criteria. Presumably Aristotle will want to say that
those features needed to guarantee an animals ability to survive and live the life
characteristic of its kind are hypothetically necessary for it to have; unlike in the
case of tools, however, an individual animal which is not well suited to survive or
to live its kinds characteristic life, but which nevertheless manages somehow to
get by, is indeed an animal of its kind. An example will help.
Aristotle apparently held it to be a matter of hypothetical necessity that if
there is a falcon, it has keen vision. In the discussion of eyes in the Parts of Animals, he notes that reptiles do not blink in the same way as birds because watery

and keen-sighted eyes are not necessary () for them (). Flightless
birds such as roosters also do not have keen vision, as their form of life does not
require it ( , ). For other birds, on the
other hand, and especially for crook-taloned ones, which behold their food from
high above, keen visionalso, and perhaps this is a better example, having watery
eyesis necessary (-).
He does not explicitly say that the necessity in question is hypothetical necessity, but the example ts very well with his explanations elsewhere. At PA .
he writes:
For we say that food is necessary because it is impossible to be without it.
is is as it were hypothetical: just as, since an axe must split, it is necessary
for it to be hard, and if hard, then made of bronze or iron, in the same way
since the body is a tool it is necessary for it to be like this and made of
things like this, if that is to be.
An axe is a tool for splitting; a falcons body is a tool for living the characteristic
life of a falcon, which includes hunting from high above. For an axe to be suited to
splitting, it must be hard; for a falcons body to be suited to hunting from above, it
must be keen-sighted; for an axe to be hard it must be made of bronze or iron; for
a body to be keen-sighted it must have watery eyes. So far the cases are exactly
parallel.
e dierence is this: nothing is an axe unless it is suited to perform the function of an axe; but something may be a falcon (or falcons body) without being
suited to perform all the functions of a falcon (or falcons body). For instance,
there could be a dry-eyed, dull-sighted falcon unsuited to hunting from above,
which might either manage through luck to snatch up enough hares to live on, or
might live an uncharacteristic lifee.g., it might be kept and fed by an indulgent
. []
, .
, , ,
, ( ,
), , .

falconer. Common sense dictates that such a creature would really be a falcon, despite being unsuited to the life of a falcon.
Perhaps Aristotle went against common sense on this point, and held that
something is not a falcon if it lacks anything constitutive of being suited to live a
falcons life. If so, his treatments of nature and of cra were exactly parallel. An alternative resolution to the diculty is this: when Aristotle discusses tools (and he
only gives explicit formulations of hypothetical necessity for these), it is sucient
for the antecedent to be if there will be an axe or if there will be a house. He
doesnt have to say if there will be an axe suitable for splitting or if there will be
a house suitable for sheltering, because nothing is an axe or a house unless it is
suited to perform the respective function of an axe or house. At least some features of animals, on the other hand, are necessary only on the hypothesis that
there is an animal suited to live the life characteristic of its species; they are not
necessary just on the hypothesis that there is an animal of a given kind. Features
necessary on this slightly more complicated hypothesis are still hypothetically
necessary.

.. Backwards owing necessitation: animals

e last kind of case to consider is that of something later necessitating something earlier in the realm of nature. It is necessary that if you come to be, your father came to be (GC ). ere are many instances within the generation of an
organism, determining the sequence in which its stages occur: perhaps the heart
must form before the liver, i.e., it is necessary that if the liver forms the heart has
formed.
I dont see that these cases introduce questions or problems of a new kind.
Again, we might worry: the generation of a human normally begins, to be sure,
with the production of seed by his or her father. But is this really the only way in
which a human can possibly come into being? ere are so many kinds of things

other than human-produced seed; many other kinds of seed, and many sorts of
pools or congurations of matter which might come together in so many ways.
For each of these things, the range of what can follow on its presence is restricted.
But there is a range, and we might wonder whether the birth of a human really
never falls within that range for anything other than seed from a human: perhaps
some other animal produces a non-standard seed, and conditions in the mothers
womb are also unusual in some way, and so
ere is no quick answer to this sort of worry. I can only say that there is
nothing clearly wrong with thinking that only human-produced seed can come to
be a human, and that Aristotle appears to have thought this. Some sorts of organism can come to be spontaneously, and not from parents, but others, including
humans, cannot: just as some products of art (such as health) can come to be
spontaneously while others (such as statues) cannot. Whether this depends on
how complicated the organisms structure is, or on some other, qualitative dierence, is not clear.

Aristotle could reasonably have held that an earlier instance of being or coming to
be never necessitates a later instance, while also holding that a later instance frequently necessitates an earlier one. ere is textual support for the suggestion that
he did in fact hold these views. So we are free to maintain that Aristotles instances
of hypothetical necessity, in which something is described as necessary for the realization of an end, are genuine cases of conditional necessity; and moreover that

. cf. HA V-VI, , , -, -, -, for kinds of organism which are always generated spontaneously. In the Metaphysics Aristotle indicates that some organisms can be
generated either from seed or spontaneously (., ; ., ), but he seems to deny
that there are such mixed cases in Generation of Animals and History of Animals (see Balme (),
pp. - for references and discussion).
. PA I. a-, Meta ., .

they represent the only kind of case of conditional necessity which Aristotle both
recognized and regarded as explanatory. is means that we can account for his
usage of the phrase hypothetically necessary on the supposition that he used it
to mean nothing more nor less than conditional necessity. I think we should in
fact account for it in this way.

CONCLUSION

is dissertation has centered around two questions, one linguistic and one philosophical. e linguistic question concerns the meaning of the phrase hypothetically necessary in Aristotle; the philosophical one concerns the content of his natural teleology.

On the rst question, I argued that hypothetically necessary means simply conditionally necessary, or necessary on an assumption, in contrast to the prevailing
view that it means something along the lines of necessary for the achievement of an
end. My argument proceeded according to the composition of the phrase: I began
with an overview of the uses of hypothesis in Aristotles corpus, went on to hypothetically, and ended with hypothetically necessary. In the clearest cases, hypothesis on its own refers to a premise of some kind, ranging from a basic principle of a special science, to a proposition assumed for the sake of deriving a
contradiction and thereby proving the negation of the hypothesis. We saw that the
word can refer more broadly to dierent types of item that have in some sense
been assumed, posited, or laid down. is seemed to dene its range of meanings.
Although it is used in some contexts to refer to things that are ends, it seemed
able to do so by meaning simply premise or assumption. Moving on to the phrase
hypothetically, or from a hypothesis, we saw that most of its uses were well accounted for by taking it to mean conditionally, or on an assumption. (In one
caseregarding monetary currencyit seemed to mean resulting from an act of
positing, and in one or two other cases the passage in which it occurred was too
obscure for us to be condent of the phrases sense.) Finally, I showed that, despite
some initial appearances to the contrary, all of Aristotles uses of the phrase hypothetically necessary can be adequately understood when we take it to mean
conditionally necessary.

As to the reason why Aristotle never refers to a non-teleological instance of

conditional necessity as a case of hypothetical necessity, I proposed that this is because in his physics, the only explanatorily interesting cases of conditional necessity are in fact cases in which something is necessary if some end will be realized.
It seems to me that in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, there is
strong reason to expect that hypothetically means the same thing in the phrase
hypothetically necessary as in other contexts, and that its meaning should be
explicable in terms of the meaning of the word hypothesis; therefore, I take it we
have good reason to believe that hypothetically necessary means conditionally
necessary.
is result has methodological implications, in that it suggests that progress
can be made in our understanding of Aristotle if we continue to work at developing systematic, economical interpretations of his technical vocabulary. A prime
candidate for this sort of treatment is the pair of terms accident and accidentally ( and ). It is worth mentioning that in contrast to
the case of hypothetically, I believe the prevailing interpretations of accidentally conate dierent meanings, rather than ascribing too many. If one of the principles behind my argument in this dissertation was, Do not multiply meanings
unnecessarily, we denitely should multiply meanings when it is necessary.

On the second question, my results are not as easily summarized. I have tried to
get clearer about Aristotles view of natural teleology, and about how he understood it to dier from other views of his time.
What did Aristotle think it meant to say, for example, that a leaf is for sheltering fruit? I dont think we are likely to discover an answer in the form of a denition or analysis (x is for the sake of y if and only if ). More probably, the notion
of being for the sake of something is primitive, and can be elucidated but not analyzed. rough a close reading of the rst half of Physics II., I began a project of
elucidation that consists in mapping out the patterns of inference which Aristotle

endorses involving teleological claims. My hope is that as the project continues,

we will nd ourselves with a deeper and more satisfying grasp of what the teleological claims mean.
ere seemed to be two main principles underlying Aristotles reasoning in
Physics II., justifying in particular the ease with which he contrasts a things being due to its simple ingredients other than as its matter (i.e., as I argued, being
due to them as ecient causes), and the things coming into being for the sake of
something. First, he needs a principle connecting the identity of a changes goal (if
any) with the character of its ecient cause: I proposed the principle that where a
changes ecient cause is a power to bring about specically that kind of change,
the change is for a given thing only if the cause is. is principle seemed to be rened in Generation of Animals, to allow that a change may be for something even
though the change is the exercise of an aimless power, provided that the aimless
power is being used as an instrument by some more controlling, end-directed ecient cause. Second, Aristotle needs a way to apply or extend this principle to the
case of a change with multiple ecient causes. I suggested that on the picture he is
criticizing, we can think of a generation as a complex change composed of many
small changes each of which has a single ecient cause (namely, a bit of earth,
stone, wood, etc.). erefore we can apply the rst principle to each component
change, and employ a second principle linking the goal of a change to the goals of
its parts. My proposal was that if a change is for a given thing, then so are all of its
parts. ese two principles gure in steps and , respectively, of the argument I
reconstructed on page .
In the future, we will want to test these proposed principles against more of
Aristotles writings, to see how plausible it is that he subscribed to some version of
them, and how they might be amended or supplemented.
Now Aristotles discussion in Physics II. is framed by a question about necessity, and in chapter I investigated in more depth the kinds of necessity that are in
question. On the one side, there was an appeal to necessity that involved regard-

ing something as the result of (or as consisting in) aimless motions produced by
aimless powers. We saw that Aristotle himself uses the word necessity in this
way in his biological works, and got a sense of how he employs it especially in the
Parts of Animals. I gave a few arguments that the so-called necessity involved in
these cases is not a form of genuine necessity: it is consistent with Bs resulting
from A of necessity that it is possible for A to be in place without B resulting.
e role of the term in the present sense is to invoke a mode of aimless causation,
rather than to assert the impossibility of somethings being otherwise.
More strongly, I articulated and defended a version of the thesis that according to Aristotle, the natural world includes no interesting causal necessitation of
outcomes by antecedent conditions. It then became a task to show how this is consistent with there being genuine, interesting causal (in the manner of nal causation) necessity in the other direction: cases in which some material or motion is
genuinely necessary for the achievement of an end. It seemed to me that the task
was feasible, and that Aristotles natural world may well include necessity in one
direction only.

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