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Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First

Philosophy as a Way of Life

Michael Weinman

To cite this article: Michael Weinman (2014) Metaphysics,�Lam and the Echo of
Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life, Philosophical Papers, 43:1, 67-88, DOI:
10.1080/05568641.2014.901695

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Philosophical Papers
Vol. 43, No. 1 (March 2014): 67-88

Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First

Philosophy as a Way of Life
Michael Weinman

Abstract: This article seeks to provide an answer as to why Metaphysics, Lam ends not with
the justly famous account of the divine nous with which this book of the treatise is always
associated, but with an aporetic account of the living and dying of everything mortal. This
surprising moment, I argue, is a manifestation of Aristotle’s conviction—quite alien to the
mainstream understanding of philosophy as a discipline today—that even the purest
moments of theoretical speculation are the work of a human soul always in touch with its
materiality and its subsistence in the world. A soul that only is at all when it is at work in
living well, which is to say when the soul enacts itself in praxis. This means: the best
understanding of the aporetic conclusion to Metaphysics, Lam is the one that asks us to
recall that Aristotle’s project of first philosophy—however much its most proper subject
matter is the unchanging and immaterial—proceeds as part of a human life lived a certain
way, and not as part of an academic discipline.

Why does Metaphysics, Lam1 end not with the justly famous account of the
divine nous with which this book of the treatise is always associated, but
with an aporetic account of life and death ‘on the farm,’ as it were? I seek
an answer to this question here neither in the discursive realm we might
call ‘epistemology and metaphysics’ nor in what can be called ‘the onto-
theological.’ Rather, I believe we must attend to this surprising moment as
a manifestation of Aristotle’s conviction—quite alien to the mainstream
understanding of philosophy as a discipline today—that even the purest
moments of theoretical speculation are the work of a human soul always in
touch with its materiality and its subsistence in the world. Such a soul only
is at all when it is at work in living well, which is to say when the soul enacts
itself in praxis. This means: the best understanding of the aporetic
conclusion to Metaphysics, Lam is the one that asks us to recall that

1 The translation is my responsibility, though I owe much to Sachs (1999). For the Greek I
consulted Jaeger (1957).

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© 2014 The Editorial Board, Philosophical Papers
DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2014.901695
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68 Michael Weinman

Aristotle’s project of first philosophy—however much its most proper

subject matter is the unchanging and immaterial—proceeds as part of a
human life lived a certain way, and not as part of an academic discipline.
To understand Metaphysics, Lam, then, is to see that it is most
fundamentally concerned with how we can best live each and every day of
our lives, and not (primarily) with divine intellect or pure being.
To persuade you of this, I offer here a careful reading of the
concluding line of Lam, an unattributed citation of Iliad,2 II.204, in which
Odysseus, holding the scepter crafted by Hephaestos and handed down
from the god of gods to the king of kings, which Odysseus has seized
from the hands of its rightful holder, Agamemnon, says, ‘A lordship of
many is no good thing; let there be one lord.’ By ending book Lam with
this claim, made in this context and cited without attribution, Aristotle
has expressly introduced the political and the ethical into the purest
moment of theõria in Aristotle’s corpus. Why is this done? Because
Aristotle here is offering a gloss of Homer’s words that amounts to what
Dylan Futter (2013), following Jonathan Lear’s (2011) work on Plato’s
Socrates and Kierkegaard, has called an ‘irony interpretation.’3 In such a
hermeneutic situation, the commentator (Futter in his case, myself in
ours) understands one dramatic interlocutor (Plato’s Socrates in Futter’s
case, Aristotle in ours) as an ‘irony interpreter’ of their dramatic
interlocutor (Euthyphro in Futter’s case, Homer in ours), who is
understood by the original author (Plato in Futter’s case, Aristotle in
ours) as an ironist.
Three claims must be true for Futter’s understanding of ‘irony
interpretation’ must hold for the ‘hermeneutic situation’ of this last
sentence of Metaphysics, Lam:

2 Translation follows Fitzgerald (1975), with frequent minor changes and an occasional
significant one. For the Greek, I consulted West (1998).
3 Futter (2013: 3) defines irony interpretation as ‘a search for an ironist’s real meaning. In
irony interpretation, the inquirer treats error and ignorance as merely apparent, as giving
evidence of irony, and offering clues to the deciphering of the ironist’s real meaning. The
goal of irony interpretation is knowledge of the second-order: knowledge of what the
ironist thinks about a topic rather than knowledge of the topic itself.’
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 69

(1) Homer was ironic (intentionally or not) in having his Odysseus

make the claim that ‘there should be just one lord,’ the irony resting
in the impossible gap between the explicit meaning of the words
interpreted—asserting the goodness of there being ‘just one lord’—
and the obvious faults of all the pretenders to such lordship in the
dramatic context;

(2) Aristotle saw this irony, and interpreted it by citing it while

describing the manner in which the divine intellect is ‘present in all
things always,’ so as to help us to make something of Homer’s irony
for the purposes of first philosophy;

(3) a ‘literal’ reading of this passage thus entails standing in the

position of the irony interpreter with respect to Aristotle the ironist,
himself the irony interpreter of Homer the ironist (intentional or
otherwise), taking an attitude toward Aristotle’s ‘unmoved mover’ that
is not unlike the attitude that Homer has toward the ‘singular
lordship’ present in Iliad, II.

Before attempting to demonstrate that these three claims are in fact all
true, and thus that the ‘single lord thesis’ with which Aristotle concludes
Metaphysics Lam is best understood ironically, let me address two points
of apparent divergence between Futter’s account of the interpretive
relationship that holds between Plato’s Socrates and Euthyphro and my
account of the one between Aristotle and Homer. First, Socrates’ irony
interpretation of Euthyphro is itself ironic because Euthyphro is not
ironic in the sense that Socrates pretends he is (Euthyphro is unwittingly
ironic). If, as I will argue, Aristotle attributes irony to Homer precisely
because Homer is (in an ordinary dramatic sense) ironic, then it looks as
though while Socrates’s ‘irony interpretation’ is itself ironic, Aristotle’s is
not. Which points to the second possible divergence: Socratic irony is
‘methodological’ in a way that Aristotle’s is not, since Aristotle’s relation
to Homer would be simply reporting the irony already in Homer, and
thus Aristotle would not be guiding the reader in ways of interpreting
irony that Plato’s Socrates is. It would be problematic for the
70 Michael Weinman

interpretation I advance if Aristotle were guileless in this way. But—as I

shall try to establish in the service of my argument that Aristotle’s
practice in Lam is as much poetic as dialectical (i.e., rational,
demonstrative, argumentative)—Aristotle is not guileless. His ‘irony
interpretation’ of Homer is methodological in the sense Futter
understands Socrates’s irony interpretation of Euthyphro to be precisely
because Aristotle hides the fact that he is quoting Homer at all, and
moreover, leaves it entirely for his listener/reader, first, to figure out that
Homer is speaking and not (just) Aristotle, second, to find the place in
the epic corpus where the claim (which is Homer’s, but only on
Aristotle’s interpretation) is made, and, third, to realize that Homer is
(just like Plato’s Socrates) allowing Odysseus to ironize himself for the
benefit of Homer’s poetic purpose, which is the methodologically
mimicked by Aristotle.
But just what does taking such an attitude entail? In order to
determine this, we first (Section 1) read Homer’s words (in Iliad, II)
through what I claim to be Aristotle’s eyes in order to see (i) what it
means to hold that Homer is an ironist here and (ii) why this is the most
plausible understanding of this moment in the epic. We then (Section 2)
turn to Metaphysics Lam itself in order to see how Aristotle’s ‘irony
interpretation’ of Homer serves his argumentative intention in this
closing chapter of that book; which, it will be argued, is to stress the
poetic character of first philosophy. A brief conclusion (Section 3)
addresses what is meant by first philosophy’s ‘poetic character’; namely,
that first philosophy is ultimately an art (the Socratic ‘art of dying’), that
achieves its end by means of bringing to light the fundamental opacity of
that about which Aristotle the ironist is ironizing about, what he calls ‘the
best thing in all of nature.’

1. A Ruling Good: Legitimacy and Order in Iliad, II

When Odysseus tells the Achaians that the time has come to submit
themselves to one rule and to one man, for whom is he speaking? A
natural presumption would be that he is telling them to submit to
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 71

himself—that he, Odysseus, alone should rule. But he is not saying that;
he is ordering his fellow soldiers to submit to the rule of Agamemnon.
Why does this responsibility fall to him? If Agamemnon, alone, should
be ruling the Achaians, then why is he not the one making the claim
himself? In answering these questions, I believe we will see that the issue
central to Book Lam of the Metaphysics is very much on Homer’s mind.
To begin, let’s remind ourselves that when Odysseus speaks these
words he is carrying the scepter he received [dexato] from Agamemnon
himself (II.186). Homer (II.106-8) takes pain to trace the lineage of the
scepter directly back to Zeus himself. This account of its lineage must be
here to call our attention to the rightful heritage of Agamemnon’s
possession of this ‘always undying’ (II.46, II.186) symbol of rule, which
he has yielded, under questionable circumstances, to Odysseus. As
Hammer (2002) has noted—rather than showing Odysseus as
successfully restoring Agamemnon’s power as, for instance, Easterling
(1989) argues—this moment shows the irony of Odysseus’s speech and
the frightening centrality of force in what is meant to be rightful,
divinely granted, authority.
Still more jarring is why Agamemnon is so willing to let go of this
piece of immortality; namely, as a test of the Achaians’ spirit. It is true
that Zeus has done well to send the vision in the form of Nestor (II.22),
added to the authority of the dream (II.57-8), but it is impossible not to
notice how utterly willing Agamemnon is to be deceived here—and how
quick he is to dismiss the loss of Achilleus and any other sign of
imminent trouble. If this is Agamemnon’s first failure, leaving aside his
mistreatment of Achilleus, then the failures quickly multiply. After
relating to the kings the content of his dream, and sharing his
conviction that the time has come to strike at Troy, Agamemnon orders
them to arm their men, but only after they first test their men’s will, as
‘this is the custom’ (II.73). While he, the lord of lords, will order the
men to flee in their ships, though, he commands the members of the
council to ‘take your stations here and there. Order them and hold
them back’ (II.75). Agamemnon here seems to have enough foresight to
72 Michael Weinman

realize, in light of recent events, that his men will fail his test; yet, not
only does he insist on making this test, calling rhetorically upon
unimpeachable themis, but he also puts his councilors in the awkward
position of having orders which are precisely to prevent his men from
following their (shameful) orders. In short, Agamemnon shows himself
unworthy of that scepter.
It is worth noting here as well, with respect to our theme of undivided
sovereignty, the agency of intellect in things, and the authority of the
‘always undying’ scepter of power. Holding it, Odysseus approaches both
the men of note and the men of the people, convincing them to stand
their ground, and prepare to rally for battle. To the former he states:
‘You do not yet understand what is in the mind of Atreides. Now he
makes trial; soon, though, he will bear down hard on the sons of the
Achaians’ (II.192-3). In so saying, surely, he convicts the judgment of
these putative leaders; there is, also, though condemnation of the leader
of council as well, for if Odysseus is right to infer that somehow these
men of note ‘did not hear what [Agamemnon] was saying in council’
(II.194), surely there is fault for the head of that council, in addition to
its other members. And there must be a deep chord of dissonance when
Odysseus concludes: ‘For the spirit [thumos] of god-nourished
[diotrepheōn] kings is great, to whom honor and love are given from Zeus
of the counsels’ (II.196-7); Agamemnon, indeed, has shown his spirit to
be anything but great, and Zeus shows him no honor or love.
It is at this moment that we hear the words in question. They are
preceded (II.200-203) by a chastisement, a command to ‘sit down and
shut up.’ That Odysseus needs to issue such a command, and that he is
reduced to chasing the men around and beating them with Zeus’s
scepter, proves that? not one of the Achaians can be king in such a
situation, let alone all. Odysseus then speaks the words Aristotle quotes:
‘A divided lordship is no good thing; let there be one lord’ (II.204). He
goes on to explain what he means by this: there should be ‘one king, to
whom the son of crooked-counseling Kronos gives the scepter and the
right of custom; so that he might be well-counseled for his people’
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 73

(II.205-6). If, with Naas (1995: 48), we see honor as coterminous with
being worthy of giving counsel, and that in turn, with being one whose
‘word and deed are not in conflict,’ then the deep and abiding ironies of
this line, revolving around two terms, custom or right (themis) and
counsel (boulē and metis), are almost painful.
To start with the last, Odysseus here asserts the primary identifying
characteristic of the great king to be the ability to be well-counseled
(bouleuēsei) for his people; this, as is clear, is Agamemnon’s greatest
failure, and what iss worse is that it is precisely Odysseus’s counsel that
he is unable to receive well. Second, Odysseus speaks of Zeus as
underwriting human authority by giving ‘just one king’ both ‘the scepter
and the right of custom.’ Yet, in just this moment, we see a man who is
most certainly not the lord of the host holding the scepter, and just
earlier we saw Agamemnon appeal to that very ‘right of custom [themis]’
(II.73), in asserting the rightness of his miserable failure at ‘testing’ his
men. Finally, why does Odysseus here refer to Zeus as the son of
crooked-counseling Kronos? This seems to preserve deceitfulness at the
very heart of authority, hardly something that inspires confidence in that
authority as right and ‘undying always.’ This is especially damning in
that Odysseus has just identified Zeus as ‘Zeus of the counsels’ (II.197).
Odysseus is begging his fellow Achaians to submit themselves to an
authority that is inherently crooked, twisted, like an eagle’s beak.
It is true that Odysseus does (more or less) succeed in restoring the
army to order here. But there is reason for reticence, or worse. Namely,
immediately following Odysseus words, we are introduced to Thersites
‘of the endless speech, still scolded, who knew within his head
measureless words, without order’ (II.212-3). Thersites is thus set up to
be the perfect scapegoat for this whole humiliating episode. As
Kouklanakis (1999: 38-9, 49-50) notes, his disorderly speech, his whole
farcical being throughout his moment at center-stage both provides the
listener of the epic a respite from the charged, desperate drama of the
preceding 200 lines and provides the Achaians within the epic a respite
74 Michael Weinman

from their cowardice and collective disorder. With the Thersites episode,
effectively, Homer lets them, and lets us, off the hook.
And yet, for all that Odysseus gets the better of him, and for all that
Thersites ends up a bloodied mess, it is hard not to believe that he has
scored a deep point, and perhaps even expressed a great truth, when he
says: ‘My good fools, poor abuses, you women, not men, of Achaia, let us
go back home in our ships, and leave this man here by himself in Troy to
mull his prizes of honor that he may find out whether or not we others
are helping him’ (II.235-8). Homer, as if knowing that those might not
have been utterly winning words, allows Thersites to follow them, in
conclusion, with these, devastatingly accurate, and fundamentally
undermining to the Achaian cause, and to the very rightness of any
authority in the Achaian army at this moment: ‘And now he has
dishonored Achilleus, a man much better than he is. He has taken his
prize by force and keeps her. But there is no gall in Achilleus’ heart, and
he is forgiving. Otherwise, son of Atreus, this were your last outrage’
(II.239-242). This ‘mixed decision’ in the struggle with Thersites makes
clear that Odysseus has achieved, as Kouklanakis (1999: 53) notes, a
‘restoration of order and of the status quo’ through chaos.
Odysseus does not stop with words; he returns to that scepter
Hephaistos worked so hard on, and that he seems to enjoy wielding so
much. Homer tells us that Odysseus ‘dashed the scepter against his back
and shoulders, and he doubled over, a round tear dropped from him,
and a bloody welt stood up between his shoulders under the golden
scepter’s stroke’ (II.265-8). Finally, this pitiable scene: the weak Thersites
struck down, crying and bleeding, gives the Achaians comfort and ‘sorry
though the men were they laughed over him happily’ (II.270). And with
this act, the scepter recedes from the spotlight, and returns to its
‘rightful’ holder, leaving us with the sense that ‘all is well’ with the
Achaian army, as it sits down to a big meal, in preparation for the battle
that will come with the Trojans, bringing the great spilling of blood
before and among the Achaian ships for which Zeus was so eager. Zeus,
we remind ourselves, of the counsels, son of crooked-counseling Kronos,
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 75

and source of the scepter and authority of the son of Atreus. A divided
lordship, we have seen amply, is no good thing. But if Odysseus—or
worse yet, Agamemnon—is really the model of the benefit of having just
one lord, perhaps there is no really good thing at all in the cosmos?
What we above all find from our careful consideration of the Homeric
episode from which the last line of Metaphysics, Lam is drawn it that there
seems to be no great cosmic order operative in the Greek ranks other
than Odysseus’ boldness to act and make of the matters what can be
made, a being-well which pervades the things that are, despite their
constantly being in the process of falling apart. I will argue that Aristotle
sees just this in this Homeric episode and wants to hold fast to it in
addressing the aporiai that arise in articulating just how the ceaseless
thinking of the divine intellect is at work in the world—and how it is not.

2. ‘The Best Thing in All of Nature’: Nous and (a) Being Beyond
Nature
Aristotle concludes his account of divinity not just with Homer’s words,
but with words arising from one of the ugliest episodes in the epics.
Moreover, he does so without even noting that they are Homer’s words.
This is my central evidence for the claim that whatever else the
conclusion of this most famous book of Aristotle’s central work of ‘pure
philosophy’ may be, it is a work that is poetic, as much as dialectical.
While I cannot present a full argument here for the significance of this
poetic, rather than demonstrative, mode of presentation, one important
and indicative fact is that by quoting Homer without attribution Aristotle
operates here just like a rhapsode.4 This doesn’t ‘prove’ that Aristotle is
self-consciously working in a poetic mode, but it is interesting that unlike
the many occasions where previous authors’ works are rather explicitly
cited in the serve of Aristotle’s dialectical argumentation, Aristotle here
literally speaks as Homer, or has Homer speak for him. He does so

4 For reason to believe that Aristotle is here consciously borrowing from Plato’s precedent,
see Baracchi 2002.
76 Michael Weinman

without even saying that these are Homer’s words, let alone which
character is speaking them or where or why in the epic corpus they are
spoken. I take this to be a very conscious decision, and a decision that
points to a conscious intention to flag the poetic character of Metaphysics,
Lam. Let me point to just one further piece of evidence: the positive
inclusion of views ‘handed down in the form of a myth’ (an obvious
gesture to poetic creation) directly in the middle of the account of the
‘unmoved mover’ in Lam, 1074b1-3. Here, too, we see dialectic’s
crowning moment—the rational discourse about the best being—issuing
in the embrace of poetry, and its necessity for doing justice to the best
thing in all nature, the motionless unchanging ousia responsible for the
possibility of a cosmos at all.
The question, then, is why does Aristotle believe we need poetry to do
first philosophy? Or, more precisely, why does he show us in his practice
that first philosophy proceeds directly through and with poetry? I
believe this rhetorical decision is best understood as the argument-by-
exemplification that the ‘irony interpretation’ of Homer makes clear:
namely, that if we are to engage in rational discourse about this perfect
life described in detail in, especially, Lam 7 and 9, we cannot do so
without also trying to account for how such completeness is at work in
the hopelessly incomplete world of becoming, a world whose
irremediable embrace of irrationality cannot be conveyed directly in
reasoned discourse.
Bearing this in mind, let us recall the opening claim of Lam 7, where
Aristotle turns his gaze directly on the divine intellect. He begins with
the necessary existence of ‘a certain ceaseless motion that is always
moving’ (L.7.1072a21); that is the circular motion of the cosmos, the
whole of nature, responsible for all the other motions within that whole.
Since there is such a motion, there must be something responsible for
that motion, without itself being in motion, something which is
‘everlasting, thinghood, and being-at-work’ (L.7.1072a25). For if there is
not, as Physics argued, there would be an infinite regress, and the moved
mover that is the cosmos as a whole would be in the middle between the
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 77

moved movers among destructible beings and something else also in the
middle (L.7.1072a22-25).
Aristotle asks after what is so capable of not being-in-the-middle and
concludes that ‘the thing desired and the thing thought are this way:
they move, while not being moved’ (L.7.1072a26). But, he continues, in
‘the primary cases,’ the thing thought and the thing desired ‘are the
same’ (L.7.1072a27). That, perhaps, is not a very surprising or
challenging conclusion; the reason given for it, though, is somewhat
perplexing: ‘For what is yearned for [epithumēton] is that which appears
beautiful [phainomenon kalon], while what is wished for [boulēton]
primarily is that which is beautiful [on kalon], but we desire [oregometha]
something because of how it seems, rather than it’s seeming so because
we desire it [oregometha]’ (L.7.1072a27-29). Three things are particularly
noteworthy here. First, we are struck by the parallelism in the
construction of the three clauses in this sentence: each presents us with
one desire-cognate and its object. This forces us to consider what is the
same and what different in each case; above all, the physical character of
epithumia, the mental character of boulēsis, and how each of those colors
the object of their attention: the immediate appearance of the beautiful
in the case of the former, and the more refined understanding of the
beautiful as it is in the case of the latter. That is, while the ultimate point
here is to show that the object of thinking and that of desire are one, the
road we take to get there forces us to see how these two registers of
desire are actually after different things, or the same thing, in different
ways.
Next, we are struck by a deviation in the clause construction: while
the first two desire-cognates are presented in terms of passive
participles—that which is yearned for, that which is wished for; the final
one, oregō, is presented as a present, active, indicative verb. This, of
course, is the first verb of the Metaphysics, and one whose import to the
development of the text cannot be overstated. Here, it appears, the verb
is doing the work of resolving the conflict between a physical yearning,
based on appearance, and more refined intellectual wishing, based on
78 Michael Weinman

being. Aristotle argues that our natural desire (or ‘stretching out’ [oregō])
for the beautiful resolves and folds into itself these two disparate
processes of physically yearning for the beautiful appearance and
intellectually wishing for the beautiful being. This is achieved quite
literally, as the active stretching out [oregometha] encompasses both what
is yearned for [epithumēton] and what is wished for [boulēton].
Our final reflection on this identity of the object and thought and
desire is that, when Aristotle resolves the yearning for the appearing-
beautiful and the wishing for the being-beautiful into the desire for the
beautiful as such, we cannot but be reminded of D.2.1013b28, where
Aristotle told us that it makes ‘no difference to say the good itself or the
apparent good.’ At that place it was the ‘that for the sake of which’ (or so-
called ‘final’) cause that was responsible for this indifference; here, that
cause is more primarily understood as not only that for the sake of which
the desiring and thinking being desires and thinks what they desire and
think. Rather, it is also the very source of the being of that which is desired
and thought, and thus of the being that desires and thinks it. This is what
is established by the following phrase, offered as a reason for the ultimate
unity of the three desire-cognates, which itself has been offered as a reason
for the unity of the thing thought and the thing desired: ‘for the thinking
is the source’ (L.7.1072a30). At bottom, the ground of the indifference of
the appearing-beautiful and the being-beautiful, or the good as it seems to
the particular being who desires it and the good as it is, is grounded in the
primacy—the ‘being a ruling source’—of thinking as an activity.
In documenting why the object of thought or the object of desire
would be a suitable candidate for ‘unmoved mover,’ Aristotle had cause
to demonstrate that, in the primary instances, the object of thought and
desire are the same. In the course of explaining this, Aristotle argues
that this is because orexis brings together both the rational element of
boulēsis and the physical element of epithumia in one activity of reaching
out for something as the good. And this provided the occasion to remark
that the thinking is the source of the being of both the object and the
ensouled being who attends to it (in both thinking and desire, which are
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 79

here united). This makes clear that the account of the divine intellect—
which immediately follows the moment in the text to which we are here
attending at such length and in such depth—is not so much about the
life of that god at work thinking, as it is about how thinking is at work in
the world.
The justly famous account of the life and activity of the divine
intellect follows at once. For once we have argued that the thinking is the
source of both the being-beautiful and the seeming-beautiful of the thing
that is both thought and desired, and that that thing is that which sets
those beings who move and are moved in motion, there is no other
conclusion to draw but that there is some active thinking, which is always
at work thinking, and is nothing other than the ceaseless-setting-to-work
of its thinking. It also cannot be that what this thinking thinks in its
thinking is any object outside or other than itself; for if it were to have
some other object of thought, that object of thought would have to be a
ruling source over it, and hence would have to be responsible for its
motion. But this pure activity of thinking cannot be in motion, or even
capable of motion, for the reasons stated above. Thus, this thinking must
be both ‘the best life and everlasting’ (L.7.1072b28) and ‘the most
excellent thing,’ a ‘thinking of thinking’ (L.9.1074b34), which ‘has a hold
of what is best’ for ‘the whole of time’ (L.9.1075a10).
But this account of the divine intellect is not the end of the story. It
issues in the tenth and concluding chapter of Lam, which immediately
manifests a great difference from its predecessors in taking on the
structure of an aporetic chapter: a structure we frequently encounter in
Aristotle’s thinking in general, and in Metaphysics, but not as the
conclusion of a Book. It might seem that this fact about Aristotle’s
rhetorical practice with respect to aporetic chapters—that they are
meant to begin rather than conclude an argument—argues against my
view, developed below, that Aristotle here ‘hangs everything’ on aporia,
with the simultaneous poetic and dialectic dwelling in the aporia as the
crowning achievement of first philosophy. But here I follow Vigo (2013:
165-67), who presents a clear view of the role of chapter 10 in Lam and
80 Michael Weinman

this Book within Metaphysics as a whole, where Lam underscores the

claims made about the necessity of the discourse ending with, as well as
beginning with, aporia in this one instance. While he closes the essay with
the Homeric line that is the focus on this article, however, Vigo makes no
comment on it. My argument here is best understood as an attempt to
vindicate Vigo’s view of the role this chapter in Lam and Lam in
Metaphysics, while also making a positive claim about why it, and the
book, end in aporia. Though I cannot argue at length for this view here,
it holds that, yes, on this one occasion Aristotle adopts Plato’s dialectical-
poetic method of exposing the ultimate truth that remains just beyond
the limits of his rational discourse. He does so, as Vigo shows, because of
the nature of the subject matter, which—uniquely among all subjects to
which Aristotelian dialectic is applied—exceeds logos just insofar as the
relation between the unmoved mover and the world of becoming is
governed by the erōs that the unchanging perceptible substance
experiences toward the divine substance, and not by reason (logos) or law
(nomos). I endorse but also hope to extend Vigo’s analysis here with the
assertion, advanced by means of an Aristotelian irony interpretation of
Homer in which logos (dialectical argumentation) but also muthos (poetic
creation) play decisive roles, that first philosophy’s ultimate task is to
orient ourselves toward this great eros.
So, for whatever reason precisely, we have seen that Aristotle chose to
end this discourse—and again, not just any discourse, but the account of
the divine intellect, the one place where we might expect from Aristotle
something like ‘pure philosophy’—with a rhapsodic ‘riff’ on a rather
tortured passage from Homer that actually argues against the seemingly
central conclusion of Lam (and hence Metaphysics as a whole). This
chapter begins with the enunciation of an ‘either-or’ question, which
exceeds the ‘either-or’ construction, and belies any straightforward
answer anywhere in the chapter: ‘One must also consider in which of two
ways the nature of the whole holds the good and the best thing, whether
as something separate, itself by itself, or as the order. Or, is it both ways,
as in an army?’ (L.10.1075a11-13). We must first note that we are
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 81

undoubtedly dealing here with the ‘best thing in all of nature’ we were
told was the object of our study all the way back in A.2, as the first clause
of this first sentence of L.10 almost replicates the earlier chapter’s words.
Having established this, we immediately see that the ambivalence which
has characterized Aristotle’s thinking about this best thing throughout
the work is no less at work here; for all that he has spelled out (in full)
the account of the divine intellect. That is to say, arguing that the good
and best thing are this ceaseless thinking of thinking has in no way
resolved the question of whether that thinking is located somehow in the
work of the living cosmos as a whole, and the beings within that whole,
or somewhere separate, itself by itself. He suggests that this is a false
opposition, that it may be that the best thing is both in the order of the
whole, and the orderliness of each, and on its own, separate.
Aristotle gives us the example of an army, ‘the well-being’ of which ‘is
present both in the general and its order’ (L.10.1075a14), but then
immediately qualifies the possibility of the well-being being in both by
saying that it is in the general ‘more, for he is not through the order, but
the order is through him’ (L.10.1075a15). First, this doesn’t seem
necessarily true of an army, as not only the passage of the Iliad with
which we have concerned ourselves, but any of a number of military
encounters and their accounts might show us, but even if it is true in that
context, it is unclear how it applies here. Aristotle does not argue for the
possibility of such an application here, but rather limits himself to the
claim that ‘all things are somehow ordered together, though not in a
similar way’ (L.10.1075a16). Sedley (2000: 333, 335) argues—as he notes
‘in close agreement with Kahn [1985]’—that what the not-similar sharing
here means is ‘the entire interaction of the cosmic hierarchy, albeit with
its principal focus in the prime mover.’ Given the circumspect string of
qualifications and the lack of causal or argumentative connectors found
in this passage, and bearing in mind the Homeric background of this
chapter, I advocate not an alternative answer as to what the ‘being-
somehow-ordered-together’ here amounts to, but a caution against
finding closure on that question at all.
82 Michael Weinman

Matters are not really resolved as we move forward, either. For even
as Aristotle asserts that those same ‘all things’ that are ‘somehow ordered
together’ are specifically ‘ordered together toward one thing,’ he
immediately undercuts our momentum again by saying that the manner
in which they are so is ‘like a household,’ and then goes on to show how
very disparate and disorganized an ‘ordering together’ a household is,
what with the free men more or less acting at will and the slaves and
livestock doing little for the common good (L.10.1075a18-24). Sedley
(2000: 327-9) stresses how this conclusion is a unique Aristotelian
affirmation of there being a ‘cosmic nature’ which is a cause of each of
the things that are, as opposed to a view (based on an emendation of the
Greek text) that he is merely describing the ‘nature of each of the things
that are.’ While I entirely follow him here, I believe it hard to find the
pronouncement so positive when Aristotle describes in detail an example
of what such a nature as cause consists: ‘it necessarily comes to
everything at least to be decomposed [diakrithēnai], and there are other
things like this that all things share in common which contribute to the
whole’ (L.10.1075a24-5). This is the best we can do: everything
contributes to the best thing by falling apart? This is no rhetorical
question, but rather a way to substantiate the dilemma posed by Sedley’s
(correct) claim that Lam, 10 is ‘Aristotle’s exercise in negative theology,’
and that we ought not to imagine that ‘bad luck’ has robbed us of texts
that would offer ‘some more positive and explicit description of the
cosmic role of Aristotle’s god’ (p. 327-8).5
Having reached this conclusion, which I wish us to understand as a
Socratic legacy in the manner just described, Aristotle proceeds to
discuss the various impossibilities in which others who have spoken
about the location of the best thing have found themselves. These

5 I am not the first to try to ‘come to terms’ with this interpretation of Lam, 10. Yu (2003:
198-9), for instance, cites the very passage we’ve been discussing as presenting the ‘entirety
of nature’ as ‘a hierarchically ordered body’ that is caused by the Prime Mover only insofar
as that ‘divine nous’ is a permanent object of desire. Even here, though, in offering an
interpretation that does not attempt to ‘glorify’ the divine nous, Yu neglects to quote
1075a24-5, where we find this confounding notion of diakrithēnai.
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 83

arguments do much to show us what is wrong with naming contraries, or

love, or good, or intellect, or forms (as the Platonists would have them),
or numbers as the source of the best thing—all things learned earlier,
anyway. They do not, as Sedley (2000: 328) notes, bring us to a place
from which, starting over, we speak positively of what is the case; which is
the usual rhetorical structure of such chapters (as, for example, A.10,
following A.7-9, or Z.4-5, following Z.3 and Z.7-9, following Z.6).
The chapter concludes, instead, while we are still trying to address
the impossibilities that follow from saying that ‘mathematical number is
primary,’ above all that such a position makes ‘the thinghood of the all
episodic’ (L.10.1076a1-2). These mathematically-minded souls, an object
of fierce debate from Aristotle throughout the work, are here guilty of
making an ‘all’ of the ‘whole,’ and depriving the things of their unity in
being oriented toward that one best thing that is somehow separate and
also in the being-ordered-together of every thing in the whole. This
elicits the short rebuke which sets up the quote from Iliad that ends the
chapter: ‘But the things that are are not resolved to be badly governed’
(L.10.1076a3).6 Aristotle asserts this without any qualification,
explanation or argument. And then, without any logical or grammatical
connector whatsoever he concludes this chapter, and this book, with that
quote: ‘A divided lordship [polukoiraniē] is no good thing; [let there be]
one lord’ (L.10.1076a4).
‘Let there be’ (estō) is bracketed here since, on the evidence of the
majority of the manuscripts available, Aristotle leaves out this verb which
does appear in Iliad, II.204. Like Sedley (2000: 346n24), ‘I have no
strong view as to whether it is best restored or not,’ though I do find the
absence of this verb provocative. That Aristotle literally leaves no space,
and includes no text, between his words and Homer’s suggests that the
line from Homer speaks for him and that Aristotle thus positions himself
as a rhapsode as much as a philosopher or dialectician, a point whose
importance has been argued for above, and which cannot be stressed too

6 ta de onta ou bouletai politeuesthai kakōs.

84 Michael Weinman

much, insofar as it provides the best opportunity to make sense of the

profound irony of the dramatic context of this line in Homer.
Sedley (2000) helpfully urges us to stop looking for some other,
better source of positive rationalist theology in Aristotle. True, but I
believe not strong enough: Lam 10 positively argues, by offering itself as
a model, that we pursue our own best demise as the way in which
rational divinity effects itself in the world through us, with philosophical
discourse in both its rational (dialectical) and irrational (poetic) modes as
the way to live such a life. What I mean by this can be made more clear
by comparison with the classic defense of philosophy as the art of dying
in Phaedo,7 where Socrates says: ‘the one aim of those who practice
philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death’
(64a) and ‘those who practice philosophy in the right way are training
for dying’ (67e). The special relevance of the Socratic understanding of
philosophy as the art of dying for assessing the connection between the
role of Lam 10 in the broader context of Book Lam and of Metaphysics in
general is Socrates’ methodological argument,8 where Socrates argues
that knowledge comes from a confrontation with the world of sense as
the embodied human experiences it. This ‘confrontation’ can be likened
to a ‘syncopation,’9 where the one who is to live philosophically is
precisely not the one who refuses to act, or who removes herself from the
world of sense, change, and chance, but rather the one who does sense,
does submit herself to chance, and does experience change, while acting
in a manner that is itself reflection (theōria) in-act.
The withdrawal that we find in philosophy, then, is not a
metaphysical abstraction or an adoption of life of theory in opposition to
a life of action, but rather the momentary withdrawal-while-engaging
that is part and parcel of the Socratic task of living an examined life. It is

7 Translations largely reproduce Reeve (2012).

8 At 65c-67a, and note that this is an interlude between the two quoted formulations (at
64a and 67e) that align philosophy and dying.
9 Weil (1965 [1945]: 14-15) identifies just this sort of ‘confrontation-in-withdrawal’ as being
the center of their being ‘geometers in the apprenticeship of virtue.’
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 85

also at the heart of the understanding of piety that Socrates interprets

out of Euthyphro10; namely, that piety is service to the gods aimed at
bringing about virtue, presumably in oneself and others. Or, in other
words: piety is philosophy. This is also, I argue, the message of Lam 10’s
aporetic structure, and most of all in the very enigmatic citation of
Homer with which Aristotle concludes. Another reason, perhaps, to take
seriously the suggestion that the attitude that Futter (2013) brings to
Socrates’s encounter with Euthyphro is precisely the one needed to
understand Aristotle’s encounter with Homer.

3. Conclusion: The Poetic Character of First Philosophy

The ‘just one lord’ with which Lam, 10 ends—surely to be identified with
the ‘divine nous’ of Lam more generally—is indeed, a powerful claim,
and justly strong in both content and voice for the place it has in
Metaphysics. But we must not forget that when we hear these words, we
have not moved argumentatively from the place where the best we could
do in locating the best thing in all of nature, in every thing that
constitutes the whole, was to say that every thing is decomposed. How
can these two be read together? How can the unity of the sovereign of
the cosmos, as demanded by the council of the things that are, be
preserved by nothing more than the decomposition of destructible, and
‘other things like that?’ Moreover—bearing in mind (1) the last verb of
the whole Book, at least as the text stands in most manuscripts, is a
passive form of politeuō, which caries not merely a sense of sovereignty
and rule, but explicitly the sense of being governed in a city (polis), with a
constitution (politeia), and (2) that the verb chosen to describe that things
fall apart at 1075a24 is not the one that Aristotle consistently uses for
falling apart or passing away (namely, the passive form of ptheirō, to
waste or destroy), but rather a passive form of diakrinō, derived from
krinō, to judge, decide or discern—what are we to make of both the

10 In trying (at 13e) to get Euthypho to define the precise ‘work’ (ergon) that piety involves,
and identifying it with virtue, and thus philosophy. I thank Dylan Futter for pointing this
passage and interpretation out to me.
86 Michael Weinman

expressly political character that the natural sovereignty of thinking has

taken on within the things that are, and the passivity of the ruling
principle within those things?
My sense is that there is an answer in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but only
when we understand the discourse to be poetic in the sense described
above. I mean to say that Aristotle’s aporetic conclusion is a positive
declaration concerning the activity of thinking itself as a way of living
well. There is no ‘saving grace’ in the composition of the cosmos by a
divine intellect, Lam, 10 tells us; there is, however, a call for the thinking
soul to create such a cosmic order in itself by judging of being as such,
and the being of beings, rightly. The ‘proper order of the cosmos’ is thus
understood to be the result of our thinking (and judging) well; which is
to say, the co-presence of the divine nous in all things must be
understood as the product of our doing and being well. And this welfare
(eu prattein), in turn, is the ground of our possibility for a good death.
This, I suggest here, is a lesson Aristotle learned from Socrates. We
would do well to be mindful of this Socratic ground of philosophy as a
way of life if we are to be successful in philosophy as a theoretical art
concerned with rational conviction. Such mindfulness most properly
belongs to the hermeneutical orientation of ‘irony interpretation.’ In this
case, by means of his irony interpretation of Homer the ironist, Aristotle
is teaching us how to perform an irony interpretation of Aristotle the
ironist, and in this way how to engage in first philosophy, an enterprise
that will ever require both poetic innovation and dialectical precision as
one thinks ones way ever closer to the irony that the best thing in all
nature appears to us only in the thoroughgoing discernment into pieces
of every living thing, and ‘other things like that.’

Bard College Berlin

m.weinman@berlin.bard.edu
Metaphysics, Lam and the Echo of Homer: First Philosophy as a Way of Life 87

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