Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
Good, as the universal end, the substantial foundation, and maintains
this position against Heraclitus and the Eleatics. The Becoming of
Heraclitus is a true and real determination, but change yet lacks the
determination of identity with itself, the constancy of the universal.
The stream is ever changing, yet it is nevertheless ever the same,
and is really a universal existence. From this it is at once evident
that Aristotle (Metaph. IV. 3-6) is controverting the opinions of
Heraclitus and others when he says that Being and non-being are not
the same (Vol. I. p. 282), and in connection with this lays down the
celebrated maxim of contradiction, that a man is not at the same
time a ship. This shows at once that Aristotle does not understand
by this pure Being and non-being, this abstraction which is really
only the transition of the one into the other; but by that which is,
he understands Substance, the Idea, Reason, viewed likewise as an
impelling end. As he maintains the universal against the principle of
mere change, he puts forward activity in opposition to the numbers of
the Pythagoreans, and to the Platonic Ideas. However frequently and
fully Aristotle controverts both of these, all his objections turn on
the remark already quoted (Vol. I. p. 213) that activity is not to be
found in these principles, and that to say that real things participate
in Ideas is empty talk, and a poetic metaphor. He says also that Ideas,
as abstract universal determinations, are only as far as numbers go
equal to things, but are not on that account to be pointed out as their
causes. Moreover, he maintains that there are contradictions involved
in taking independent species, since in Socrates, for instance, there
are several ideas included: man, biped, animal (Metaph. I. 7 and 9).
Activity with Aristotle is undoubtedly also change, but change that is
within the universal, and that remains self-identical; consequently
a determination which is self-determination, and therefore the
self-realizing universal end: in mere alteration, on the contrary,
there is not yet involved the preservation of identity in change. This
is the chief point which Aristotle deals with.
Aristotle distinguishes various moments in substance, in so far as the
moments of activity and potentiality do not appear as one, but still
in separation. The closer determination of this relation of energy to
potentiality, of form to matter, and the movement of this opposition,
gives the different modes of substance. Here Aristotle enumerates the
substances; and to him they appear as a series of different kinds of
substance, which he merely takes into consideration one by one, without
bringing them together into a system. The three following are the chief
among these:—