THE PHENOMENON OF CHANCE IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT
by
MELISSA M. SHEW
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of Philosophy
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
September 2008
11
University of Oregon Graduate School
Confirmation of Approval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by:
Melissa Shew
Title:
"The Phenomenon of Chance in Ancient Greek Thought"
This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree in the Department of Philosophy by:
Peter Warnek, Chairperson, Philosophy
John Lysaker, Member, Philosophy
Ted Toadvine, Member, Philosophy
James Crosswhite, Outside Member, English
and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies/Dean of the Graduate
School for the University of Oregon.
September 6, 2008
Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of Oregon
Libraries.
in the Department of Philosophy
Melissa M. Shew
An Abstract of the Dissertation of
for the degree of
to be taken
111
Doctor of Philosophy
September 2008
Title: THE PHENOMENON OF CHANCE IN ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT
Approved:
Dr. Peter Warnek
This dissertation engages three facets of Greek philosophy: 1) the phenomenon of
tyche (chance, fortune, happening, or luck) in Aristotle's Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and
Poetics; 2) how tyche infonns Socrates' own philosophical practice in the Platonic dialogues;
and 3) how engaging tyche in these Greek texts challenges established interpretations of
Greek thought in contemporary scholarship and discussion. I argue that the complex status
of tyche in Aristotle's texts, when combined with its appearance in the Platonic dialogues and
the framework of Greek myth and poetry (poiesis), underscores the seriousness with which
the Greeks consider the role of chance in human life. I claim that Aristotle's and Plato's texts
offer important counterpoints to subsequent Western philosophers who deny the importance
and existence of chance in human affairs and in the universe, dichotomously privileging
reason over fortune (Boethius), necessity over chance (Spinoza), certainty over contingency
(Descartes), and character over luck (Kant). My investigation of tyche unfolds in relation to
a host of important Greek words and ideas that are engaged and transfonned in Western
IV
philosophical discourse: ananke (necessity), aitia (cause, or explanation), automaton, logos
(speech), poietic possibility, and philosophy.
First, a close reading of tyche in the Physics shows that its emergence in Book II
challenges the "four causes" as they are traditionally understood to be the foundation of the
cosmos for Aristotle. Attentiveness to the language of strangeness (that which is atopos) and
wondennent (to thauma) that couches Aristotle's consideration of tyche unveils a dialogical
character in Aristotle's text. I also show how tyche hinges together the Physics and the
Nicomachean Ethics. Second, I argue that tyche illuminates the possibility of human good
through an inquiry into human nature in the Ethics, exploring the tension that tyche is,
paradoxically, a necessity as it is grounded in nature and yet relates to human beings in
"being good" (EN 1179a20), ultimately returning to a deeper understanding of the relation
between physis and tyche. Third, I argue that the Poetics also sustains an engagement with
tyche insofar as poiesis speaks to human possibility, turning to Heidegger and Kristeva to see
how this is so.
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Melissa M. Shew
PLACE OF BIRTH: Royal Oak, MI
DATE OF BIRTH: June 20,1977
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene
Boston University, Boston
Miami University, Oxford
DEGREES AWARDED:
Doctor of Philosophy, Philosophy, 2008, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, Philosophy, 2006, University of Oregon
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Ancient Philosophy
History of Philosophy
Continental Philosophy
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Marquette University,
Milwaukee, 2008-2009.
Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, 2007-
2008.
Lecturer, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,
Milwaukee, 2007.
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of English, University of Oregon,
Eugene, 2006-2007.
v
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon,
Eugene, 2002-2006.
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
Manresa Award for Course Development, Marquette University, 2008.
Outstanding Teacher of Composition, University of Oregon, 2007.
Graduate School Research Award, University of Oregon, 2005.
Paideia Prize for Teaching Excellence, University of Oregon, 2004.
Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2002-2007.
Assistantship for Greek Philosophy, Boston University, 2001.
PUBLICATIONS:
Shew, Melissa. 2008. Review ofD. Brendan Nagel, The Household as the
Foundation ofAristotle's Polis (2006). Forthcoming in Ancient Philosophy.
Shew, Melissa. 2008. Review of Susan Collins, Aristotle and the Rediscovery of
Citizenship (2006). Forthcoming in Ancient Philosophy.
Shew, Melissa. 2008. Review of Nancy Shelman, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient
Philosophy Behind the Military Mind. Polish Journal ofPhilosophy Vol. II No.
1: 171-175.
Shew, Melissa. 2008. Chance and human error in Spinoza and Lucretius.
Philosophy Now Issue 68: 12-16.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express sincere appreciation to my family: my late grama, for her lifelong
example of (as she put it) "blooming where you're planted;" my dad for his praxical advice;
my mom for her poetic spirit; and my sister for reminding me at times that I was writing the
best possible philosophy dissertation~a dissertation "in theory." Their encouraging support
of my education has buoyed me in many ways. Faculty and students in the Philosophy
departments at Boston University, the University of Oregon, and Marquette University have
likewise sustained me fonnidably. At the University of Oregon, I have enjoyed six years of
wann collegiality, challenging classes, conscientious professors, and dedicated
undergraduates who kept me on my toes; I am thankful for the many, many efforts of its
small but mighty Philosophy Department, cheerily tended by TK McDonald.
I also thank Drs. John Lysaker, Ted Toadvine, and James Crosswhite for reading this
manuscript (in the summer, no less) and giving me a hard time about it; I have benefited from
their philosophical acumen and dialogue. A special debt of gratitude goes to my advisor, Dr.
Peter Warnek, whose patience, generosity, and ability to inhabit the Greeks' questions have
demonstrated the life and urgency of Greek thought time and again.
I am lucky to have the benefit of good friends in philosophical matters and otherwise
who contributed to the cultivation of this dissertation. Karen Cooper, Jena Jolissaint, Brent
Crouch, James Wood, Kim Garchar, Alexis Simpson, Stacy Keltner, Mat Foust, Anne
Tomlanovich, Clint Newman, Tricky Burns, Elizabeth Caldwell, and new friends at
Marquette have demonstrated what it means to be hellkia, or flowering in life. I am also
deeply grateful to Adam Arola, who carefully read and gave me substantial feedback on most
viii
of this manuscript, which probably would not have concluded (let alone begun) without his
encouragement. I thank Adam for being my officemate extraordinaire whose passion for
philosophy and constant conversation finds friendship with me.
Finally, to Michael, who made me realize I needed to write this dissertation, and for
helping me understand how truly fortunate I am.
IX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTIOJ\[ 1
Section I: Aristotle's Triptych: The Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and
Poetics 1
Section II: Contemporary Resources for Reading Aristotle 5
Section III: From Contemporary Thought Back to the Greeks 8
Section IV: Tyche's Role in Greek Thought 10
Section V: Getting There From Here: Ways to Consider the Phenomenon
of Tyche 12
Section VI: Outline of Chapters 16
II. TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO NATURE IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS 27
Section I: The Contemporary Aristotelian Landscape 32
Section II: Necessity and the Natural Road 46
Section III: Aitia and Logos: Two Explanations 54
III. THE STRANGE AND WONDERFUL PLACE OF TYCHE AND
AUTOMATON IN ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS II. 4-6 65
Section I: Aristotle and His Predecessors 66
Section II: Tyche and Automaton in Physics II. 4-6........................................... 75
Section III: The Role ofKata Symbebekos 81
Section IV: Chance: A Necessary Logos?......................................................... 87
IV. TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO HUMAN NATURE IN ARISTOTLE'S
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 92
Section I: An Endoxic Beginning? Tyche as Eudaimonia 100
Section II: Tyche and "External Goods" 108
Section III: Tyche and the Gods 118
Section IV: Tyche, Solon, and Looking to the End............................................ 124
xChapter Page
Section V: Tyche, Stability and Forgetfulness 129
V. THEKAIROSOF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE 136
Section I: Kairos: The Opportune Moment 139
Section II: Tyche, Physis, and the Possibility of Becoming Good..................... 153
VI. TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO POIETIC POSSIBILITy............................ 175
Section I: Plato's Symposium: Eros and Harmonia 179
Section II: Heidegger's Topology: Earth and World 182
Section III: Kristeva's Topology: The Semiotic and Symbolic 187
Section IV: Aristotle: Rhythm and Mimesis 193
Section V: Tyche: "That Little Something" 197
VII. EPILOGUE: THE MYTHIC HORIZONS OF TYCHE 202
BIBLIOGRAPHY 208
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
MaLa, 8EWV !lEV owpa KaL &XVUllEVOL TIEp &vaYKl]
TETAa!lEV cXv8pwTIO L' o~ ya.p TIOAU epEPTEPO LELo L.
(Mother, though it is painful to us, we human beings by necessity
must carry the g(fts of the gods, for they are much stronger than we are.)
-Homer's Hymn To Demeter (ll. 147-148)1
Section I
Aristotle's Triptych: The Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics
In Book X of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says,
[S]ome people think one becomes good [yLvE08aL 0' &ya8oue; o'LovTaL] by nature
[epUOEL], others think it is by habit [f8EL], and still others think it is by teaching
[oLoaxiJJ. As for what comes from nature, it is clear that it is not up to us that it
is present [To llEV ouv Tfle; epUOEWe; OEAOV we; aUK Eep' ~!ll.V uTIapXEL], but by some
divine explanation [oLa TLvae; 8ELae; aLTLae;] it belongs to those who are truly
fortunate [TOl.e; we; &ATJ8we; ElJTUXEOW uTIapXELJ. (EN 1179b20-23)
This statement exemplifies that which is most aporetic in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics:
the relationship between an ethical inquiry and nature as it crystallizes the tension at the base
of our human struggle to "become good." That Aristotle concludes this text with a thought
that essentially reopens an inquiry into our human nature and our struggles with ethical
1
inquiries at all might seem at first surprising: Is it not Aristotle, above all other philosophers,
1 Translation mine. For Aristotle's Physics, Nicornachean Ethics, and Metaphysics, I consult Joe Sach's
admirable translations, adjusting them, when necessary, with my own; for Aristotle's Poetics, I consult
Seth Benardete's translation. For the Platonic dialogues, I use the excellent translations of Eva Brann (et.
al.), Seth Benardete, and Peter Kalkavage, amending them, when necessary, with my own translations. For
readability's sake, I do not note my amendments to their translations, and I use the Loeb Classical LibralY
for all the texts in Greek in this dissertation. All other texts (e.g., Herodotus, Pausanias, Homer) are my
translations from the Greek.
2who most systematically lays out, in this very work, a program for our ethical development,
and thus our becoming virtuous? Why would he, at the end of such a text, return to an
endoxic starting point by asking how it is that people normally think of becoming good (i.e.,
by nature, habit, or teaching), let alone puzzle his readers and students with statements about
the slim possibilities of our ever "becoming good" in ways that are solely up to us? The
conclusion of this text shows Aristotle's response to such questions: the heart of an ethical
inquiry demands a return to an inquiry into nature in order to understand our human place,
should we be truly fortunate enough to be able to do so.
Not only does the Nicomachean Ethics recoil onto and gesture beyond itself in this
way, but Aristotle's other texts do as well. For the purposes of my investigation into the
phenomenon of tyche (chance, fortune, luck) in Aristotle's work, I concentrate mainly on the
Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics. This trinity of texts calls us as readers to attend
not to three completely isolated tasks; rather, they demand that we consider, for example, our
own ethical comportment to the tasks at hand when making an inquiry into nature (as in the
Physics), or into Greek tragedy (as in the Poetics). An instance of this thought appears in the
Physics, which opens with Aristotle urging us to consider how it is that we situate ourselves
in an inquiry into nature, saying that "it is necessary to lead ourselves forward in this way:
from what is less clear by nature but clearer to us to what is clearer and better known by
nature" (Phys. 184a20; my emphasis). In this text, an inquiry into nature involves how it is
that we begin to lead or comport ourselves in such a task, aware, one might say, of our
respective ethoi and ethoi in making such an investigation. Considering how it is that we
lead ourselves through a natural inquiry implicates not our shortcomings as human beings,
but instead demands our attention to a host of issues not generally taken to fall under concern
in the Physics: Aristotle's reception and treatment of his predecessors concerning the origins
3of the cosmos; his willingness to begin, as he does in the Ethics, from an endoxic starting
point with what most people hold to be true; and a return to questions explicitly engaged in
the Ethics, including the question of our agency and what, in the end, is up to us. In other
words, our ability to read the Physics might depend on a prior or future attunement to the
questions it raises, and how we hear Aristotle in this text has everything to do with who we
are-or who we think we are.
Likewise, the Poetics demonstrates the horizon in which philosophizing is possible
for the Greeks, which occurs in association with tragedy as an example ofpoiesis. For the
Greeks, tragedy erupts that which is simultaneously both beautiful and terrifying about
(human) life, for it is through the witnessing of tragedy as a beautiful meter for acting and
doing (pratte in) that a person realizes the radical contingency of her lot. How one engages
this realization, however, is not removed from one's comportment when reading the Physics,
for as Aristotle tells us in his Metaphysics, the way one hears a lecture depends upon what
one is accustomed to (one's ethos, Meta. 994b30-995a2). So when we encounter nature, or
physis, in the Poetics, we ought not ignore it; rather we should do what we do in the Physics:
seek to understand and uncover the place of nature in tragedy and life, or the place of tragedy
and life in and as nature. Likewise, when Aristotle says that what's "possible is persuasive"
(Poetics 1451b16-17), we must be open to how truly considering what's possible demands a
return to physis as something other than a mere natural cause as physical generation or a
static being; at this point we must ask about the possibility of nature itself, both in its
generation and becoming. In the Poetics we thus witness the beautiful interplay of the
possibilities ofpoiesis and philosophy as they both ultimately concern what is possible for
human life, through poetic reflection.
4The concern I raise here comes close, I realize, to collapsing what are generally seen
as three different kinds of inquiry, intended for three different purposes: the Nicomachean
Ethics concerns human beings becoming good; the Physics investigates nature as it is
regardless or our comportment to and in it; the Poetics really bears little on philosophy, for it
investigates art and tragedy. However, each text, as we shall see, is excessive to itself in a
way that paradoxically affirms the specific role that it plays in Aristotle's thinking. To put it
else-wise, we might follow Hans-Georg Gadamer in "Image and Gesture," and say that it is
through a confrontation with the Greeks that we recognize "this truth: we are always other
and much more than we know ourselves to be, and what exceeds our knowledge is precisely
our real being" (1986, 78). In other words, our own lives-insofar as we're not anathema to
Greek thought but intimately bound to it-also demonstrate the interplay between excess and
deficiency, or the whole and the part, as we are other and more than what we know ourselves
to be.
In the space of these thoughts, both in-between and beyond them, we find tyche. For
all intents and purposes, tyche has been a radically impossible consideration for philosophy,
and has shown itself to be a common allergen to the history of Western philosophy. Hop-
scotching this history, we can see the following: In the beginning of his Theological-
Political Treatise, Spinoza relegates chance to mere superstition, or our human deficiency
(but tendency nonetheless) to perceive the world with erroneous inaccuracies (1994, 6-10); in
the Critique ofPure Reason, Kant says that chance and fortune are merely concepts that
illegally "run loose" in our minds (1996, 142); Boethius sees fortune as a "monstrous lady,"
an association with which nothing will be won or lost for a person (1999,2-3); in his
commentaries on Aristotle, Simplicius maintains that the Greeks themselves did not admit of
tyche in any serious way (1997, 88-95). In fact, the list of philosophers who neglect tyche
5includes nearly every major thinker since the Greeks, with the following few~albeit
notable~relatively contemporary exceptions.
Section II
Contemporary Resources for Reading Aristotle
The exceptional philosophers who do engage chance, however, do so not in relation
to the Greeks, as I shall do, but in relation to their "own" thinking: Nietzsche, Schelling,
Derrida, and Kristeva among them. Against the current of a hyper-rationalized comportment
to the world and subversive to dominantly paradigmatic thinking in their own times by taking
on the tradition in many ways, these philosophers intimate important Greek concerns without
calling on them directly: the relationship between chance and necessity, circumstance and
agency, cause and explanation, and tragedy or myth and philosophy. In Schelling's dialogue
Clara, for example, we hear Clara's provocative statement concerning the first of these
relationships. She says, "The holiest necessity of my inner being is not a law for nature. In
nature even divine necessity takes on the color and appearance of chance, and what was
initially accidental operates with the irresistible force of a terrible necessity once present"
(2002,27). Here we encounter the slippage between chance and necessity, which, like veiled
brides wedded to nature, assume each other's guise in a way that suggests chance as
operating as a pre-necessity in nature, removed from how Clara experiences herself. This
idea hearkens straight back to the Greeks, particularly to Aristotle's discussion of tyche and
automaton in the second book of his Physics, after a sustained discussion of necessity
(ananke). In this text Aristotle raises a similar concern to Clara's, i.e., the perplexity that
many experience when even thinking about tyche as a horizon (horismenon) in our lives
regarding our human place (phys. 196a4): Can we understand our lives as being beholden to
chance, or must we acquiesce to necessity alone? How we experience our lives, according to
6Aristotle, has everything to do with what we make of nature such that an inquiry into nature
is also, as Clara notes, an inquiry into our nature as well.
Likewise, Nietzsche and Derrida seriously consider the place of chance in our lives as
it destabilizes our attempts to make usual sense of ourselves and the world around us. For
Nietzsche, as Joan Stambaugh notes, the role of chance (Zufall) takes the shape of a creative
impulse in our lives. Stambaugh says that for Nietzsche, "[w]e have power not literally over
the events that occur in our lives; what we do have power over, or at least the opportunity to
develop such power, is our attitude, our stance in the face of what occurs" (1999, 95). That
is, as Aristotle notes that things do appear to us without any discernible reason for happening
in the way they do, Nietzsche says that how we respond to unforeseen events or occurrences
is largely up to us, simultaneously admitting the relative epistemic uncertainty regarding
human knowledge of nature and the necessity of what is. What matters, for Nietzsche, is
how one comports oneself in an unstable world, becoming, as Antigone, a law unto oneself
(Ant. In. 822), something that we see Clara saying in the previous paragraph: By recognizing
the ways in which she is not bound, in any simple way at least, to a purely mechanical or
deterministic view of nature, she experiences herself in excess ofthis nature. As a result,
according to Stambaugh, Nietzsche "moves toward bringing chance and necessity far closer
together than they are generally conceived" in "trying to distance necessity from an
inexorable mechanism and chance from cruel, senseless randomness" (1999, 98); no
teleology is required in order to embrace the impetus for a creative impulse in Nietzsche's
world.
Derrida too emphasizes the way a person comports oneself in the world regarding
chance events in his long essay "Taking My Chances/Mes Chances." According to Derrida,
both the ways in which a person deals with unforeseen events and the ways in which a person
7might experience her life as a matter of chance plays a prominent role is disrupting a static or
determined view of the universe. Derrida says, for example, that "[0]ne can fall well or
badly, have a lucky or unlucky break-but always by dint of not having foreseen-of not
having seen in advance and ahead of oneself' (1984, 5). In the Nicomachean Ethics, we will
see how the inability to see in advance of oneself yields a host of problems for Aristotle
while also opening the possibility of ethical action itself in light of our inabilities to see in
advance of ourselves. Against Spinoza, who blames this inability to foresee the future, as it
were (i.e., our desire for good turns of fortune and our fear of bad things), on our misplaced
reliance on fortune as superstition, Derrida maintains, similar to Nietzsche, the ways in which
we come to understand ourselves in such moments: "Oevres [openings] befall us. They
speak about or unveil that which befalls in its befalling upon us. They overpower us
inasmuch as they explain themselves with that which falls from above. The oevre is vertical
and slightly leaning" (1984, 17). In other words, a serious consideration of chance in our
lives requires not only that we duplicitously disregard a teleological trajectory, but that we
consider how it is that we, too, fall openly in our human experience; our receptivity to chance
events and circumstances beyond our control thus forces us to ourselves fall with the
experiences we normally consider beyond our control.
This "fall," which resonates both with Nietzsche and Derrida, itself has a history,
falling to us by way of the Latin word cadere, resounding in our word "cadence." It
describes both the experience of things beyond our control happening to us and how we
articulate or take up these openings in our lives. For Julia Kristeva, we are, in our
contemporary age, much like the mythical Narcissus, experiencing a vertigo of love with no
object other than a mirage (1987,104); we are contemporary wandering Narcissi in search of
creativity, in search of ourselves and each other. This vertigo, however, also has a cadence:
8As we shall see with Aristotle's Poetics, the way this cadence gets taken up in our lives is
through experiencing the rhythm, or fall, of our very lives and their reflection in Greek
poiesis, both broadly construed as making and also narrowly as poetry. For the Greeks,
poiesis as poetry requires attention to the rhythm of speech and music in composing meters to
speak to what is possible in human life, often taking shape in metered tragedy. Yet,
Aristotle's Poetics also resonates with the ways that Heidegger and Kristeva also speak of
poetry (or a work of art) and the life of a poetic subject respectively, calling our attention to
the vivacity or Aristotle's text insofar as it points us beyond Greek tragedy to reconsider the
demands ofpoiesis as speaking to what's possible in human life. Thus, insofar as tyche
resonates with what's possible at all or in the first place, we will see how this thought takes
shape in poiesis as an exemplary demonstration of this possibility.
Section III
From Contemporary Thought Back to the Greeks
It seems, at this point, that we're a long way from the Greeks: Why discuss these
relatively contemporary thinkers in relation to Ancient "metaphysical" and "ethical"
concerns? The response is deceptively simple: the philosophers I've just noted, when
combined with some recent scholarship on both Plato and Aristotle, open a new way of
speaking about the Greeks that confronts many of our preconceived ideas about them,
prompting a return to the Greeks themselves to see how their thoughts take shape in light of
fruitful scholarly and philosophical texts today. Moreover, the intertextual possibilities for
reading the Greeks, as I shall explore, highlight the urgency with which attention should not
be paid to each text as autonomous and unrelated entities but should always be, as the Greeks
themselves consistently demonstrate, in conversation with one another. This is not to say,
however, that each text fails to have its particular project and aims-and in fact my work
9here will demonstrate the importance of each Aristotelian inquiry separately-but that we
will be sensitive to the ways in which Aristotle's texts inform each other in meaningful ways.
To carve out in advance, in other words, and to determine the scopes and aims of each text by
virtue of the ways that they're taken up and appropriated in the history of Western
philosophy conspires to commit an injustice to the texts themselves.
For these reasons, any sustained treatment of a surfacing idea in Greek thinking
suggests that we weave, like Ariadne, a thread through many texts, aware nonetheless of the
perils of doing so. The main difficulty I see when encountering Greek thought is the way in
which we, as readers, are constantly confronted with the enormity of the whole of everything
at each tum, and the ways in which we might be discouraged from saying much of anything
at all regarding our Ancient predecessors. As Gadamer says in "Philosophy and Poetry,"
"[t]he language of philosophy is a language that sublates itself, saying nothing and turning
towards the whole at one and the same time" (1986, 138). Insofar as the Greeks in my view
embody the whole of philosophy in the first place, the task of philosophical discourse,
especially about something as strange as chance, threatens to slip away into nothingness,
while pointing beyond its own capacities. However, perhaps the best way to proceed is to
heed Hermocrates' proclamation to Socrates in the Timaeus that Socrates' interlocutors won't
be lacking in heart in offering their feast of the logos to him (Tim. 20c3), and Socrates'
advice to Theaetetus throughout the dialogue of the same name to have courage when taking
up philosophical tasks.
Rather than mere pep talks from Socrates to his interlocutors, these exchanges point
to a telling moment in the Platonic dialogues as much as in Aristotle's own texts: the
necessity of beginning where one is, even if this place is often, as the Greek poets knew, in
medias res, or, like Dante saw, in the middle of life itself. The repetition of this theme in
10
Aristotle's Physics and Nicomachean Ethics in particular points to the ways in which
inquiries into nature and into the human good implicate each other; we must begin where we
are, and in so doing, give an account of ourselves in the process. Thus it is that tyche plays
such a pivotal role in Aristotle's texts, for it disrupts how it is that we ordinarily understand
ourselves, or tend to want to give a precise account both of nature and our human place in
and with it.
Section IV
Tyche's Role in Greek Thought
What is tyche? Tyche loosely means "chance," "fortune," "happening," or "luck,"
and its family of related words includes automaton, kata symbebekos, eudaimonia and kairos,
among others. In order to make some sense of the role of chance in Greek thought, I begin
my reading of Aristotle with his lengthy discussion of tyche and automaton in Book II. 4-6 in
the Physics, noting the strange place of tyche in this text: Tyche appears just after Aristotle's
discussion of the ways in which things come to be in II.1-3 (the "four causes"). After naming
these ways, Aristotle says first that there indeed may be another way that things come to be in
addition to these "four causes," and that this way might be by tyche. However, chance is not
a cause, according to Aristotle, at least not in any usual sense of the word; it is not the fifth
"lost cause." The strangeness of Aristotle's discussion, however, is underscored by his
observation that we do see many things happening on account of tyche and automaton, and
that they have everything to do with human flourishing and the place of human life in nature.
Extremely difficult, however, is to think of tyche in this text as something other than
a cause, or being responsible for anything coming into being or happening at all. So if tyche
is not a cause, then what is it? We do see many things happening on account of tyche,
according to Aristotle, and it happens all too often, according to him, that the ancient wise
11
people either left everything up to chance or regarded nothing as being from fortune. It is
right, Aristotle says, to wonder at how this is the case (Phys. 196a)-i.e., at how it is possible
for the wise to have an "all or nothing" account of chance, for, according to Aristotle, it may
occupy a different kind of place entirely.
How we read this part of the Physics (Bk. II. 4-6) bears upon how we think about
Aristotle in the Greek tradition, and how we read this section will help us understand the
phenomenon of chance as it also configures itself throughout the Platonic-Socratic corpus as
a moment in which something as simple as a chance happening can detennine the very
character of the dialogue to take place, or, in one particularly dramatic instance, the very
death of Socrates. Recall the beginning of the Phaedo on this point, when Phaedo explains to
Echecrates that Socrates' extended stay in prison before his death is a matter of tyche. Recall
also the beginning of the Theaetetus wherein the dialogue is couched in a series of chance
occurrences that shape the space of the dialogue and open the possibility of dialogue at all.
Recall Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics wherein he speaks of the paradoxical necessity of
chance and the benefits of good fortune in human life, suggesting that, since it is altogether
too difficult-if not impossible-to investigate matters as they are hap/os ("simply" or "to
themselves"), we must investigate things as they are to us, which we know from the Physics
involves engaging tyche as a phenomenon, for chance is disclosed in what appears to us in
our horizon of experience and life.
To put it another way: Tyche occasions, and makes possible the possibility of our
lives as occasions, or as infinite potentialities. If one simply hears tyche as a figure in control
of our lives as Lady Philosophy does in Boethius' prison cell or as King Lear does in
deeming chance an "arrogant whore," or if tyche becomes a matter of mere predestination as
in an orthodox Presbyterian belief, then tyche cannot resound in the circumstances wherein
12
we happen to find, as it were, ourselves. It is precisely in the moment of breaking from
superstitious fates~in front of whom we have no say or control~and the giving back to
ourselves the very possibility of our lives that takes its hold when considering tyche for the
Greeks.
In shorthand, while tyche may be spoken of as momentary, or sudden, it is perhaps
better articulated as a sustained phenomenon enveloped in philosophy, or even in the
possibility of a philosophical life, i.e., one that affords the space for thinking and seeking
self-knowledge. There is, truly, a suddenness to tyche: things happen to or befall you and to
me. However, our lives, too, are indeed happenings, and the question of nature does involve
the Aristotelian distinction between things that are to themselves and things that are to us
(things that are hap/os and things that appear to us).
The phenomenon of tyche is thus doubled: On one hand, it appears to us as a
phenomenon, interrupting an otherwise determined or thought-to-be-determined path (like
Lucretius' clinamen); on the other hand, it urges us to consider (as I prompted this
introduction with thoughts from Aristotle about becoming good) what it means to be truly
fortunate, which might even mean to be philosophical, as we'll see Socrates suggest in the
Greater Hippias and elsewhere.
Section V
Getting There From Here: Ways to Consider The Phenomenon of Tvche
The only way to proceed through explaining how the above concerns about tyche
work in the Greek texts is carefully. Close exegetical work through a host of Greek terms
and philosophical questions in Aristotle (and, to a lesser extent, the Platonic dialogues)
demonstrates the following three conclusions about the phenomenon of chance in Greek
thought:
13
1. Tyche is neither an afterthought nor a fleeting concern for the Greeks, but receives
sustained treatment from them in a way that commands our attention in three ways:
a.) It disrupts a deterministic view of the universe in the Physics; b.) It opens us to
the possibility of a good life in the Nicomachean Ethics; c.) It plays an important role
in the Poetics as it demands an encounter with what's possible in human life.
2. Careful consideration of tyche demonstrates the necessity of reading the Greek
texts such that each text illuminates both the whole and the parts of Greek thinking.
This idea holds not only for Aristotle's texts individually, but also for the Platonic-
Socratic dialogues, which autonomously speak the whole of everything, as I noted
earlier that the Greeks always seem, at least, to do. In other words, we will see how
each of Aristotle's texts speak to other necessary conversations beyond what is taken
to be the scope of the text itself (e.g., that an inquiry into nature demands that we
consider our ethical comportments in such an inquiry) while thus affirming the
horizons ofeach text. 2
3. Rather than enter a "Plato versus Aristotle" discussion so common in scholarship
for the last fifteen hundred years, I advocate reading them not as participating in a
gigontomachia, but a gigontophilia, if! may.3 I submit, moreover, that considering
the character of Socrates as an exemplary demonstration of Aristotelian thought is
viable not only because Aristotle so often seems to have Socrates very much on his
mind, which he surely does, but more because the strangeness of Socrates himself
2 Or, to put it in the fonn of a question as Nietzsche does in The Gay Science, "What good is a book that
does not even carry us beyond all books?" (1974, 215)
3 To provocatively overstate and oversimplify the case, we may say, as Emerson does in "Circles," that "[a]
wise man will see that Aristotle Platonizes" (200 I, 177).
14
demands, at base, that we ultimately consider the relationship between chance and a
philosophical life.
In light of these and other conclusions not only about the role of tyche itself in Greek thought
but also about the ways of proceeding to that thought (for it certainly doesn't stand alone,
surgically removed from its contexts), I offer ultimately that we should view tyche as
primarily as phenomenon for the Greeks. I take the word "phenomenon" quite literally from
its Greek predecessor, phainomenon, which means, simply, "that which shows itself." Thus,
one sense of the title of this dissertation, The Phenomenon ofChance in Ancient Greek
Thought, is just to consider the ways in which tyche shows itself in Aristotle's texts, paying
attention to how it appears in them, and why it appears when and how it does. Circumscribed
within such a horizon, tyche appears to us, as I have noted, as a destabilizing force in
Aristotle's thinking, commanding that we reconsider not only how tyche appears, but also the
context in which such an appearance arises. In other words, one cannot speak of tyche as a
phenomenon alone; rather, its self-showing, if not depends on, then is at least co-existent or
determinate with, a host of other Greek tasks outlined in this introduction, from how to read
Aristotle's texts as belonging together to considering what each text offers singly regarding
tyche. In this sense, then, tyche as a phenomenon emphasizes the stem of the word: phaino-
means "to bring to light," and is connected with the very word for light, phOs. This
dissertation, then, is on one hand nothing other than an attempt to bring to light of a Greek
idea that has mainly remained dormant since the Greeks. The task of bringing tyche to light,
then, or awakening it from its historical slumber, orients my dissertation through and
through.4
4 Two problems might arise in this formulation: First, I don't mean to claim here that tyche is necessarily
something, like ousia or even hypokaimenon. In fact, while it might seem more philosophically fruitful to
15
However, another seemingly more ordinary sense of the word "phenomenon" also
infoDns my thinking about chance. In the ways in which we would contemporarily speak of
something as phenomenal in the sense of extraordinary or eventful, as in witnessing a
phenomenal sunset or participating in an extraordinary event, tyche too appears to us in this
way. While overstating tyche as an unusual or exceptional occurrence raises red flags in the
history of philosophy (for it is these ways of categorizing tyche that lead philosophers and
literary characters alike to distrust tyche as something that seems either superstitious or
malicious regarding human needs and nature), we can benefit from such a discussion by
testing basic ways in which we encounter the world, over-detennined and desensitized by, I
suggest, a teleological and detenninistic view of the cosmos that often fails to consider what
is possible, not only for our human nature, but for and in nature itself. In other words, while
a consideration of tyche as extraordinary or an unusual event helps us think about its strange
place in Greek thought, a more compelling way to think of tyche in this phenomenal sense
concerns the very basic composition of the cosmos and our orientation to it, which is, simply
put, phenomenal, in ways we often hardly realize. We may stretch ourselves to this thought,
then: The ways in which we engage tyche as a phenomenon for the Greeks have everything
to do with how we take up the universe and our lives, letting what's visible come to light in
them.
consider ways in which tyche itself allows for things to come to light-itself being nothing-for my
purposes here, its neglect in contemporary scholarship on the Greeks and by and large in the history of
philosophy lead me to bring tyche itself to the fore of our Greek discussion. Second, I also don't mean that
tyche can be "simply" brought to light, as ifby examining it for the Greeks will yield ultimately clarity.
Rather, tyche is fundamentally obscure and possibly opaque, emerging from the background or the
darkness just long enough for us to glimpse it before retreating once again to its shadows; it always reminds
us afthe shadows.
16
Section VI
Outline of Chapters
The first two chapters focus on Aristotle's Physics, the second two on the
Nicomachean Ethics, the final on the Poetics. This trajectory is surely not the only way to
consider Aristotle's thinking about tyche, but hopefully it is compelling for a consideration of
tyche in Aristotle: Beginning in the first chapter with a consideration of how one finds
oneself on the natural road in making an inquiry into nature (physis), we will see not only
how tyche arises as a source of wonder for Aristotle in an investigation into nature, but also
how one must be attuned to receive a discourse concerning nature. That is, in many ways,
Aristotle's Physics serves as the basis for all subsequent investigations into the nature of
beings, for in this text Aristotle encourages us to take ourselves up in an inquiry that always
demands that we interrogate the nature of our inquiry. Thus, in Aristotle's Physics, we will
attend to a double-gesture implicit throughout Aristotle's thinking about tyche: Not only will
we see why tyche emerges as an impasse (aporia) for Aristotle's thinking about nature, but
we will also see how this thinking urges us to attend to the character of tyche in human life.
In order to see how this is so, in the first chapter I argue that many traditional and
contemporary ways of reading Aristotle's Physics fail to attend to this double-gesture by
overlooking the movement of Aristotle's text insofar as it proceeds dialectically and
phenomenologically. That is, many Aristotelian scholars, as we shall see, tend to fault
Aristotle for not completing a systematic treatise on the nature of nature, thereby dismissing
the ways in which Aristotle encounters philosophical matters as they present themselves for
consideration, looking instead for a doctrine of the essence of beings, e.g., or a teleological
system that explains the cosmos. Yet Aristotle's Physics urges us to do otherwise. Consider,
for example, how Aristotle says that nature is neither what his materialist predecessors have
17
claimed it is (i.e., sheer matter/material [or wood], hyle) nor what mathematicians would
make of it (i.e., pure fonn, eidos), but instead is both (Phys. 193a30-31, 193b19, 194a13).
Regarding his materialist predecessors, Aristotle says that nature is not simply that/rom
which something comes into being, but instead is the movement to which something becomes
what it is (Phys. 193bI9). In this way, Aristotle says, nature is indeed an eidos, insofar as
physis is on the way to becoming what it is, taking shape in a certain way according to its
nature. However, the conclusion that Aristotle draws from such thinking regarding his
predecessors is not that nature is simply a "from which" or a "to which;" rather, insofar as
one attends to things that come into being, one must attend also to the ways in which one
speaks of such things, mindful that the ways that things show themselves to us speaks to the
ways in which we are already engaged in an inquiry of the matter at hand (Phys. 193a29-32).5
This last point-i.e., attending to the ways in which one is comported to receive a
speech (logos) concerning nature-speaks to what one might call "ethical" facets of
Aristotle's Physics, for in this text Aristotle constantly solicits our attention in this way,
urging us to consider how we find ourselves on the natural road. Thus, in the Physics, we see
that while Aristotle attends to ways in which one may speak of nature as such, we also see
that he calls us to attend to how it is that one makes an inquiry into it, rather than positing
nature as an object for a subject; we are already claimed by the matter at hand, and thus we
have a responsibility in the Physics to attend to the ways in which we find ourselves making
such an inquiry. For this reason, in the first chapter I also argue that rethinking the
5 This point is extremely difficult, but helpful here might be Aristotle's statement amidst his discussion of
hyle and eidos that "[t]he nature spoken of as coming into being is a road into nature" (Phys. 193b14-15).
That is, the relationship between genesis (coming into being, or generation) and how we speak (legomene)
about nature does not yield a complete definition of nature insofar as it speaks to nature as nothing other
than the process of generation and destruction; rather, considering the ways in which we speak of things
coming into being is one way-one road (hodos)-through which we articulate how nature shows itself to
us, or is already disclosed in some way through our speaking of it.
18
relationship between "cause" (aitia) and "speech" (or, as many scholars would have it,
"reason," logos) demands that we think of aUia not as a cause simply removed from our
inquiry, but instead as Aristotle does, which is as a kind of explanation with attention to
offering the best explanation for a given event or matter. Such an imperative demands
receptivity to Aristotle's text that looks beyond a causal chain of events in order to speak of
nature, opening the door for Aristotle's consideration of tyche in Bk. II, a discussion that
simply cannot happen if one thinks of causes in either a purely materialist or mathematical
way (i.e., as pure matter or form). Rather, by emphasizing the said-character and presence of
the logos, as Aristotle does, and by paying attention to how it is that philosophical matters
open to him (as we shall see, e.g., with wonder and attention to strangeness, or mindful of
wise predecessors and endoxic starting points), Aristotle offers a kind of phenomenology of
tyche, if not of nature.
Now, how can this last statement be the case, and what does it mean? Regarding the
Physics, what it means is that Aristotle articulates the manifold ways in which beings show
themselves to us, but not as beings completely severed from the ways in which we receive,
experience, or speak of them; rather, the logos that Aristotle offers us in the Physics is one
that challenges the ways in which one might want to give an account of nature or human life
that is primarily scientific or wholly removed from the question and task of understanding
what something means, or what it would look like to give the best account of an experience
or event. In light of this way of reading the Physics, in the second chapter I suggest that
Aristotle, like Socrates in the Phaedo, turns to the logos in the Physics in order to make an
inquiry into nature in the first place. Given that nature is said in many ways, and that
whatever one might say about nature is disclosed through the manners in which we speak of
it, we also see how we are already situated in and through the natural road in such an inquiry.
19
While a vicious circularity threatens here (i.e., to read the Physics we must first
consider our ethical or human comportment in and to nature, but considering our attunement
is predicated on a prior understanding of nature), the point of my emphasizing in the first
chapter the relationship between aitia and logos in light of the natural road at the beginning
of the Physics is to situate how Aristotle speaks of tyche, automaton, and that which is kata
symbebekos (incidental) in the second chapter, a task that is untenable if one does not attend
to the method of Aristotle's proceeding such that tyche solicits the language of wonder,
culminating in a formidable aporia (impasse) concerning the ways in which his predecessors'
accounts of it fail to say much at all of it. Hence the relationship between aitia and logos is
pivotal in Aristotle's Physics concerning chance, for tyche (and also kata symbebekos) is one
way in which things appear to us and speak to our human nature, but never as an aitia
removed from a logos. Rather, I argue, to speak of aitiai is primarily to offer an explanation,
and doing so remains tied-if not at times identical with-a logos that one might give of
nature or anything else.
Thus, when Aristotle speaks of tyche in Bk. II of the Physics, he does so insofar as
tyche pertains to that which appears to us in an inquiry into nature, and he says that tyche
appears to us as paralogou, not without an account or reason (which would be alogou), but as
challenging a logos that we might otherwise want to give concerning it and its place in a
natural inquiry. Para- can mean "go against," resonating with paradoxa, which means
"against commonly held opinion." Here an opening emerges for philosophical thought, for if
tyche were simply alogou, then it couldn't be spoken of at all. Yet, Aristotle speaks of it as a
phenomenon that shows us something about ourselves in the Physics, and he does so, as I
show in chapter two, by way of explicitly articulating the character of our inquiry in terms of
thinking (dianoia) and choice (proairesis). Tyche thus pertains to the character of human
20
life, not opposed to nature, but emergent from it. Yet Aristotle does not elaborate fully in this
text the ways in which tyche speaks to our human place in nature; thus I tum to the
Nicomachean Ethics in the third and fourth chapters in order to flesh out how tyche speaks to
the character and place of human beings.
Aristotle's provocation that tyche is one way in which things appears to us in an
inquiry into nature compels us to further investigate what tyche is such that it bridges an
inquiry into nature and speaks to the character of human life. To this end, in the third
chapter, I show how tyche formulates Aristotle's thinking about human flourishing
(eudaimonia), suggesting that the ultimate kinship between the two speaks to the ways in
which life is disclosed in excess of a solitary individual, requiring a fundamental relationality
of oneself to others, the gods, or even one's own life. That is, insofar as tyche speaks to that
which befalls us, like external goods (ta ekta) as we shall see in the third chapter, or an
opportune moment (kairos) as we shall see in the fourth, it also demands that we respond to
the gifts of tyche, mindful of the radical contingency of human life. Yet however it is that a
person responds to tyche or its host of related words is ultimately particular in ways that
speak to the character of human life as being bound to the task of flourishing in the first
place. As a result, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics can be seen as an attempt to grapple with
this particularity and contingency in ways that speak less to a normative program for ethical
development than it does to an imperative to return to the nature of human life itself.
While I wish not to overstate this last point, it is by considering tyche and its
association with eudaimonia, theos (the gods), the power of a continuous life, and the
circumstances (kairoi) in which we find ourselves that Aristotle speaks to the nature of
human beings, situating what's possible for us according to our nature. We will see Aristotle
in the Ethics calling us outside or beyond ourselves, in many ways narrowing human agency
21
by virtue of the nature that we are. Yet this narrowing of human agency is duplicitously said.
On one hand, Aristotle paints a picture of human life that is subordinate to external goods, the
gods and other people, a life that seems squeezed by these competing concerns. On the other
hand, however, through recognizing ways in which life itself emerges from these
relationships in order to speak to the place of human beings in the cosmos and world, we see
Aristotle explode this picture of human life through thinking about what's possible for it, or
for us.
In the third chapter I also show how tyche appears near the beginning of the Ethics as
an endoxic starting point for Aristotle's inquiry into human flourishing. By reformulating the
Greek word for flourishing (eudaimonia) to its etymological origins and philosophical
significance in the context of the Ethics, I suggest that Aristotle sees tyche and flourishing not
as diametrically opposed, but as speaking to the ways in which human life solicits beyond
itself, as I've said throughout this introduction. By pursuing this line of thought, I also: trace
how eudaimonia requires external goods, but note that these goods require a person putting
them to work in her life; see how the relationship between tyche and theos speaks to the
possibility of human excellence or virtue (arete) as something divine or in excess to a solitary
individual, returning an individual to herself and to the world; argue that those who are
fortunate pass their lives most continuously in ways that speak to the energeia (being-at-
work) of a human life. By the end of the third chapter, then, we will see how an inquiry into
nature in the Physics helps us ground an inquiry into human nature in the Ethics. Attending to
the ways in which we find ourselves also on the natural road in the Ethics, particularly
concerning what human nature discloses about itself and thereby also about nature, Aristotle
suggests that we already find ourselves situated in an ethical inquiry insofar as we want to
flourish in the first place.
22
In the fourth chapter I turn to the importance of kairos (circumstance, or moment) in
relation to tyche, for insofar as tyche pertains to that which can be otherwise, particularly
regarding human life and action, kairos designates both the particular circumstances in which
a person acts and the force of possibility concerning philosophical questioning; both speak to
what's possible for human life. Whether one thinks of kairos as an opportune moment for
acting or as that which occasions the act of questioning, at base we will see how human
possibility emerges through our being claimed by the circumstances in which we happen to
find ourselves. Such possibility is utterly transfoDnative, and suggests the untimely
circumstances of philosophizing. To demonstrate how this is so, I turn to Heidegger, who, in
speaking of the kairological character of human life, shows how beings declare the force of
possibility in themselves being this possibility. In other words, insofar as the Ethics pertains
to beings that can be otherwise (i.e., human beings), and insofar as we must grapple with the
contingency of our lives, we speak not to a timidity required in action in order to ward off
danger, but to the ways in which we ourselves, by virtue of the beings that we are, declare
what's possible through our very being; such a comportment requires courage. As one
always acts in a given circumstance and never simply (hap/os), so also does one engage in
philosophical inquiry-i.e., according to the matters and questions that present themselves to
a person, claiming her in ways that speak to the receptivity required to engage in
philosophical discourses, both about nature and human action. Thus at the end of the fourth
chapter I return to the relationship between Aristotle's Physics and Nicomachean Ethics and
suggest that the relationship between tyche and physis requires the priority of an open
comportment in and to the world, given that tyche, like physis, speaks to ways in which
beings show themselves to us in their (and our) possibilities. Short of a completely
systematized treatise concerning the nature of the world and the correct ethical path for
23
human action, Aristotle describes for us instead the many ways in which beings show
themselves to us, should we be fortunate enough to receive them.
In the fifth chapter I tum to a particular facet of human life as it relates to tyche, i.e.,
poiesis. While a return to the Physics would also be beneficial to the paths of thinking laid
out here, the Poetics gives us a way to consider poiesis carefully as it relates to Aristotle's
thinking in the Nicomachean Ethics. We are poietical beings, Aristotle tells us in the Ethics,
for in light of the ways in which a human being is more than the sum of her parts and requires
something more than herself in order to flourish, the "end" (felos) of this life too exceeds her,
and even her own knowledge (as we heard Gadamer say). However, another way of
rendering poiesis~broadly as "making," and more narrowly as "poetry" -also finds a kinship
with tyche: Poiesis, in having its end outside of itself (as opposed to praxis [action], where
the end is in the action, or the thing done), speaks not to necessity (and thus is not epistemic),
but to what's possible. Moving away from episteme (and also possibly sophia, "wisdom") as
knowledge that can't be otherwise, we tum our attention to the activity ofpoiesis insofar as
it, like tyche, pertains to that which can be otherwise.
Since poiesis and tyche pertain to that which can be otherwise, and since we are or
can be poietical beings, in chapter five I engage Aristotle in four main ways: First, I discuss
the ways in which a poet (or maker) is more philosophical than a historian because a poet
speaks persuasively of what might be or come to pass, as opposed to a historian, who speaks
merely of what has happened. Second, I work through the continuous strife at the heart of
poiesis, doing so through the interplay between earth and world in Heidegger's "Origin of the
Work of Art" in order to see how Heidegger speaks of the place of being through its
emergence in art, which subsequently helps us understand the nature ofpoiesis as it requires
activity and passivity. Third, I tum to Kristeva's account of poetry as a practice of the
24
speaking subject, demonstrated through the interplay and tension between the symbolic and
semiotic aspects of one's life, likening them to Heidegger's "earth" and "world" in order to
see how rhythm-in the act of speaking, but also in poetry-challenges our tendencies to
posit a unified subject. Thus, from Heidegger and Kristeva we see how poiesis speaks to
poetry or art itself (in Heidegger) and also to the speaking subject herself (in Kristeva).
Yet the aim ofpoiesis, Aristotle tells us, is beauty (to kalon, Poet. 1447a8). But what
is this beauty to which poiesis aspires, and how is such beauty known? Aristotle says,
regarding tragedy (his exemplary demonstration ofpoiesis), that "after undergoing many
changes, tragedy stopped when it attained its own nature" (Poet. 1449aI6). As we will see in
chapter four, in the Ethics Aristotle says that what is disclosed by tyche can make life both
beautiful and poietical (EN 11 OOb22-29); tyche thus hinges together not only the Physics and
the Nicomachean Ethics through disclosing ways in which nature shows itself to us, but also
to one possible way of considering the character of human life as itself poietical as having its
end elsewhere, and moreover to the activity ofpoiesis as it too points beyond itself, calling
human life back to itself and the world in the process. Regarding what it means for
something to "attain its own nature" in light of the necessarily excessive character ofpoiesis,
though, seems strange, but by the end of the fifth chapter we will see how Aristotle and
Kristeva speak of a shared concern, which is the necessity ofpoiesis in human life as that
which destabilizes an otherwise static sense of self and truly allows catharsis-repetition,
mimesis, abjection, and action-to happen. For Kristeva, the ultimate recourse for such an
experience when thinking about how a subject comes into being is literature and its mimesis
of the speaking subject; for Aristotle, it's tragedy. Both are poetry.
A few more thoughts about the more implicit thematic elements and issues of this
dissertation, elucidated by way of Gadamer: "[E]verything we see stands there before us and
25
addresses us directly as if it showed us ourselves," he says in "The Relevance of the
Beautiful" (1986, 11). This statement rings most true regarding the Greeks, who demonstrate
time and again the manifold ways in which life comes to be disclosed to us-e.g., through
experience, philosophical inquiry, tragedy, action-as long as we attend to nothing short of
everything, or as long as we can see what we can see. On one hand, such a task is of course
daunting, for how could one ever attend to everything, and could one be assured that such
attention would in fact yield a complete picture of human life, nature, and all that they
concem? Probably not. On the other hand, however, the Greeks draw from whatever sources
they can in order to see what they see; nothing-not the poets, myth, experience, tragedy,
common opinion, or wise predecessors-is out of bounds for philosophizing or inquiring
about their world. Free from contemporary philosophical terminology and attentive to the
horizons that present themselves for examination, the Platonic dialogues and Aristotle
describe a rich world in which a philosopher can tum to poetry, tragedy, or myth in attending
to the character of human life and nature. Such a comportment highlights the urgency for
philosophical dialogue for the Greeks, for nothing is too small, fanciful, or ordinary to be
abandoned; all is fair game and worth their attention.
The Greeks' sensitivity in this way informs my thinking about tyche in the pages that
follow, particularly regarding Socrates' philosophical practice as characterized by tyche and
the mythic horizon of chance that concludes my work here. As himself embodying a kind of
mythic status in the history of Westem philosophy (as he might have also for Aristotle in his
time), Socrates demonstrates one way in which we can understand Aristotle's thinking about
what it means to be truly fortunate. This thinking is particular (i.e., certainly Socrates is
utterly unique) but also shows us something about the nature of philosophizing and about life
itself. "There is something in our experience of the beautiful that arrests us and compels us
26
to dwell upon the individual appearance itself," Gadamer says (1986, 16); as we shall see,
Socratic strangeness is one such manifestation of this kind of beauty, calling us to attend once
again to the character of a poieticallife. Thus, Socrates shares an affinity with myth, or
tragedy: Particular yet transcendent, emergent from an untimely place, Socrates (like tragedy
and myth) forces us to see what we see that shows us ourselves.
But perhaps enough or too much has been said already. In the spirit of the Greeks,
then, let us make a new beginning.
27
CHAPTER II
TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO NATURE IN ARISTOTLE~S PHYSICS
And there is virtue surely in the position of one who takes nothing for
granted, and is always ready to discuss the universe.
-Virginia Woolf (1989,256)
Understanding begins [... ] when something addresses us.
-Hans-Georg Gadamer (2003, 299)
In his Novum Organum, Francis Bacon says that Aristotle "affords us a single
instance" of "natural philosophy" that is "little more than useless and disputatious" (1. 53).
Yet, according to Martin Heidegger, Aristotle's Physics is the "fundamental book of Western
philosophy, never sufficiently thought through" (1998, 185). Celiainly, both of these
statements cannot hold: If Aristotle's Physics is the mysterious keystone of Western
philosophy, as Heidegger says that it is, then an examination of it would give us insight to
Aristotle as a thinker of nature, as the very title of his work-Physics-suggests. However,
this does not mean that Aristotle's insights thus fulfill the desire of modem philosophers to
wrangle a determinate system of philosophy (or better, epistemic certainty regarding nature)
from his works, leading Bacon to conclude that Aristotle does not, in fact, have anything to
offer philosophers regarding the question of nature.
It is the case, paradoxically enough, that Aristotle's Physics both serves as a
cornerstone (if not a keystone) to subsequent philosophers because of its diligent
investigation of nature, and that Heidegger's proclamation that we have yet to understand the
Physics holds true, or at least requires serious attention. In light of the dilemma concerning
28
the status of Aristotle's Physics in the history of philosophy and questions concerning how to
read Aristotle in the first place, an upsurge in contemporary Aristotle scholarship reveals new
investigations into the complexity of Aristotle's thought both in the Physics and elsewhere,
especially regarding the ways in which one might read Aristotle promisingly as a non-
doctrinal thinker. As Christopher Long notes, "every attempt to render Aristotle's thought
consistent and complete fails to do justice to the dynamic nature of his thinking, to the
elasticity of his mind, and to his willingness to risk failure rather than to establish certainty
by stealth" (2004, 5). I take this to mean that a return to Aristotle marks a return to inquiry,
not to certainty, for as we shall see Aristotle's own text support, sensitivity toward Aristotle's
method in the Physics reveals deep aporiai that resist certain dogmatic syntheses. This
pivotal assertion stands against, for example, Werner Jaeger's influential assessment of
Aristotle as wanting "to purge the philosophical consciousness of its mythical and
metaphorical elements and to work out the strictly scientific foundation of a metaphysical
view of the world that he took over in its main outlines from Plato" (1962, 377). Here,
Aristotle becomes the totalizing figure of philosophy in seeing through, with some significant
changes, Plato's "own" project, a statement that becomes problematic in my consideration
not only of Aristotle's Physics but the entirety of Aristotle's work, less for its commentary on
the relationship between Plato and Aristotle than for its reductive account of Aristotle as
wanting to work out a "strictly scientific foundation of a metaphysical view;" Aristotle's own
texts urge us to pause at such compulsively totalizing statements.
To this end, 1. L. Ackrill explains that Aristotle is often wrongly assessed as a
doctrinal thinker because "he does aim at developing a systematic and comprehensive
philosophy, and at reaching final and correct conclusions about the questions examined," and
also because his works have always been studied as if they hold doctrines (1981, 1). In
29
tension here is Aristotle's intension regarding his own work: If one maintains that Aristotle
has the aims that Ackrill notes, but that such an authorial desire resists doctrines that readers
might discern, then Aristotle seems to fall to pieces, unable to complete his own aims in light
of a tradition that has already decided what Aristotle's own goals in his writings are. Yet,
even if one is to grant Aristotle as a primarily scientific thinker, as Jaako Hintikka does,
"[w]hat is still being missed [in Aristotle scholarship] is the problem-driven character of
Aristotle's thought" (1996,83), a character that demands our attention, regardless of what we
decide about Aristotle's "scientific" thought.
But what does this "problem-driven character" of Aristotle's thinking entail, and how
does it manifest itself in Aristotle's texts? What would it mean to read Aristotle non-
doctrinally, sunendering our modem impulses to categorize Aristotle as a philosopher who
begins a systematic investigation into nature that only subsequent philosophers (perhaps like
Bacon) finish, or even try to refute? This chapter investigates Aristotle as a philosopher for
whom inquiry, not certainty, holds the greatest insight in the Physics. This claim entails that
we pay close attention to questions that arise in Aristotle's texts concerning the nature of
tyche and the ways in which it arises as a question for Aristotle. To this end, I follow
Gadamer, who says that "[t]he essence of the question is to open up possibilities and keep
them open" (1989, 299). Aristotle, I think, engages in such questioning, prioritizing
questions over systematic philosophizing such that the character of philosophy itself comes
to live in the questions that we ask and seek to understand within a given horizon, like in an
inquiry into nature. As Gadamer also notes, "[t]he horizon is the range of vision that includes
everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point. [... ] '[T]o have a horizon' means
not being limited to what is nearby but also being able to see beyond it" (1989, 302). To
have a horizon, then, is to be always in the process of engaging such boundaries as
30
boundaries, mindful of the activity of marking and unmarking what one can see or
understand. Gadamer continues, "A person who has a horizon knows the relative significance
of everything within this horizon, whether it is near or far, great or small. Similarly, working
out the henneneutical situation means acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the questions
evoked by the encounter with tradition" (1989, 302). What it means to "have" a horizon is
fundamentally active: We must strive to articulate what we can see in such a horizon in order
to demarcate or mark out the subject-matter of our inquiry, mindful that doing so necessarily
excludes important matters for consideration, which, if we are attentive, we can glimpse or
stand in relation to; the possibility of seeing beyond a given horizon tempts us through and
through. We must remain mindful, thus, and interrogate our place in this horizon, as we
ourselves help detennine its character and participate in its activity.
The priority of the question and the character of our horizons reverberates in a certain
sense also with Emerson, who pushes the possible limitations of our horizons in "Circles" by
saying, "[t]he eye is the first circle; the horizon which it fonns is the second; and throughout
nature this primary figure is repeated without end" (2001,174). Since, for Emerson, "[t]he
key to every man is his thought," the life of this person is "a self-evolving circle, which, from
a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that
without end" (2001, 175). This interplay between a human being and her horizon, between a
person and her life, depends on "the force of truth of the individual soul" (2001,175). One
way to hear Gadamer and Emerson together is to consider, then, the character of our inquiries
such that we always remain open both to the universe and to ourselves as possibilities,
allowing new horizons to destabilize an otherwise determined sense of self and nature.
With these thoughts on the nature of horizon in mind, in this chapter I show that the
character of Aristotle's dynamic and elastic mind illuminates problems that Aristotle
31
encounters in his own thinking, forcing him to begin, like Timaeus in his eponymous
dialogue, over and over again in order to make an inquiry into nature, continually inhabiting
various horizons, from the nature of chance and necessity, e.g., to how it is that they belong
together in a discussion ofphysis. Because of the emphasis I place on inquiry in Aristotle,
attempts to systematize Aristotle's thinking in accord with absolute certainty (such that we
can deduce a programmatic Aristotelian treatise on ethical practice in the Nicomachean
Ethics, e.g., or a conception of the "four causes" that settles Aristotle's discussion about
generation and destruction in the Physics) prohibit reading Aristotle fruitfully as he
encounters aporiai (impasses) in his own thinking.
In order to demonstrate the consequences of such a reading, this and the next chapter
engage seven main facets of Aristotle's thinking in the Physics:
1) the contemporary landscape of reading Aristotle, with attention to how the
question of tyche arises within Aristotle's Physics;
2) a close examination of necessity (ananke) in nature (physis) at the beginning of the
text, regarding both the "natural road" and our orientation on/in it;
3) the relationship between cause (aitia) and logos, insofar as it frames Aristotle's
sustained consideration of tyche after his discussion of the "four causes;"
4) Aristotle's relationship to his predecessors' thinking about the place of tyche, and
Aristotle's own wonder at the strange place of tyche in previous thought and in our
expenences;
5) the relationship between tyche and automaton;
6) the role of kata symbebekos;
7) the paradoxical necessity of chance in the Physics.
32
Through an examination of the key phrases and terms above, I demonstrate that Aristotle's
discussion of chance (tyche) in Book II of the Physics disrupts a traditionally understood
coherent system of philosophy in Aristotle's thinking in light its problematic status in the
text. Reading the text attentively in this way, I suggest that tyche plays a central role in
Aristotle's thinking, one that is marginalized, as we shall see, by readers of Aristotle who
pursue a totalizing account of his thought. Finally, I show that overlooking the status of
tyche in Aristotle falls in line with a traditional thematic in the history of philosophy that
dichotomizes necessity, reason, and even philosophy itself over and against tyche, even as a
phenomenon in our lives. However, chance itself disrupts this philosophical trajectory, and it
is through a close look at Aristotle's thinking about tyche, when combined with two instances
of Socrates' relationship to tyche in the Platonic dialogues, that demonstrates the significance
of this idea in Greek philosophy.
Section I
The Contemporary Aristotelian Landscape
"The plain fact is," Joseph Owens tells us,
that despite Greek optimism, the human mind does not have any intuitive grasp
of specific substantial forms in natural things. [... ] The stupendous success of
the qualitative and quantitative procedures in the natural sciences since the
sixteenth-century stands out in vivid contrast to the sterility of a method that sought
first the final cause, identified it with the formal cause, and then tried to use the
form as a blueprint for understanding the details of natural things (1981, 140).
The optimism of which Owens speaks here points to the desire of philosophy to provide a
blueprint that would apply to knowledge of natural things, subsuming these things under a
heading of "formal cause" which would then serve as an over-arching map for scientific
knowledge (episteme) in Aristotle's philosophy. This optimism hinges on a teleological view
of nature in which nature itself acts purposively, not as it is endowed with intelligence or
nous, but purposively insofar as nature acts like a mind for a purpose, something which,
33
according to Owens, is "accepted merely as a fact" for Aristotle, "on the ground of
immediate observation and deduction" (1981, 145). Noting that the term "teleology" is a
modern one, fixed in meaning by contemporary use to "denote the study of final causes in
nature" (1981, 136), when we use the term regarding nature, "it assumes that purposive
activity is present and asks how the activity is to be identified and described" (1981, 136).
This process of describing purposive activity according to Owens is what Aristotle
undertakes in his Physics and elsewhere in order to achieve epistemic knowledge, which is
the achievement of philosophy in understanding nature in its regularity, purposiveness, and
necessity.
To this end, Jonathan Barnes says that "[t]he second condition in Aristotle's account
of knowledge is that what is known must be the case of necessity: if you know something,
that thing cannot be otherwise" (1982,35). Thus, according to Barnes, knowledge is always
of what is necessary, and a standard view of episteme for the Greeks accords with such an
understanding: Episteme pertains to universal knowledge, or what must hold in all cases in
all times. We might say that the achievement of episteme, then, provides the blueprint that
Owens notes underlies and directs Aristotle's philosophical desire: The achievement of
episteme is, in many ways, the achievement of philosophy itself insofar as universal
knowledge becomes the necessary category for understanding the particulars within nature,
or anything that comes to be. Accordingly, Barnes says, "Aristotle, like Plato before him,
was primarily concerned with a special type of knowledge-with what we may call scientific
understanding; and it is plausible to claim that scientific understanding involves knowledge
of causes" (1982, 34). For both Owens and Barnes, the Greeks ambitiously and primarily
pursue scientific understanding, an understanding that then can be corrected by subsequent
34
philosophers and scientists because a measure of correctness, as that which necessarily is
true, emerges as the pinnacle of scientific-philosophical thought.
But, here's the rub: Ifwe accept Owens' and Bames' general accounts of Aristotle as
they pertain to episteme as necessarily universal thought, and if we accept an over-arching
teleology available to us from the sixteenth-century onward, applying it retrospectively to
Aristotle, then we must see Aristotle as little other than a worthy but ultimately failed
philosopher who couldn't satisfy his own goals for philosophical thinking, i.e., the
systemization of philosophical thought understood as pure episteme. Thus, we might be
tempted to "correct" Aristotle's flaws, thank him for beginning a sustained treatment of
philosophical insights regarding the necessity of nature and how we come to know this
necessity methodologically, and move on to those who fulfill Aristotle's project. "The
result," according to Owens, "is that the Aristotelian teleology of nature, in spite of its many
penetrating and still useful insights, lacks the completion that might give it overall appeal
today. Though humanistic to the extent that it directs all other terrestrial things to man's
service, it leaves man himself far too much a thing in nature" (1981, 146); Aristotle's view
belittles the (perhaps Cartesian?) power of the human mind in remaining distinctly separated
from nature, a nature which, according to Owens, "in strict philosophical use was limited to
things that undergo sensibly perceptible motion" (1981, 136). For Owens, then, Aristotelian
teleology "extends outside the individual agent, and destines the individual to be sacrificed
for a higher good, as a somewhat more accessible foundation in substantial nature" (1981,
145); even human beings abide an epistemic blueprint.
This picture of Aristotle privileges the role of epistemic knowledge over and against
all other ways of knowing or of philosophical inquiry, and thus, on their own admission,
Owens and Bames must give accounts of moments in Aristotle's texts that threaten to disrupt
35
a coherent picture of systematic philosophizing to a certain end. Noting that "for Aristotle as
well as for Plato, general philosophical views hold only roughly and for the most part" (1981,
146), Owens urges us toward the consequences for thinking of nature in such a view: Nature
becomes that which holds always or for the most part such that anything happening in other
ways, like tyche, is said to happen against nature or necessity, falling thusly outside the scope
of epistemic knowledge by virtue of its irregularity-nature pertains to what is necessary, not
what is possible. As a result, insofar as Aristotle is concerned with certain knowledge, such
considerations lay outside a general blueprint for understanding, one that depends solely on
the necessary regularity of nature, or at least of the necessity entailed in the certainty of
knowledge itself.
Yet, how does such a reading hold in light of, e.g., aporetic moments in Aristotle's
texts that seem to destabilize a thoroughly logical deductive movement of philosophy, and
how might Aristotle's diverse texts hang together in light of such a systematic emphasis on
the necessity of scientific knowledge? Responding to these questions demands that we come
to terms with possible ways of reading Aristotle such that we might seriously consider tyche
in the Physics, for on Owens' and Barnes' view, no consideration of tyche is really necessary,
for all that's necessary is necessity itself and the ability of knowledge to think the necessity
of what is. We can see already, from the thoughts sketched out in this section, how tyche
needn't be a concern for the two of them and other Aristotelian scholars: In a teleological
view of nature, what happens, happens always or for the most part, and understanding this
regularity is the best that philosophy can do insofar as it pertains to regularity approaching
universality-the goal of philosophical thought. As I have noted, according to Barnes,
knowledge is always of what's necessary, for to know something is to know that it can't be
otherwise.
36
In light of these stakes and before turning to tyche specifically in order to see how it
challenges the viewpoints laid out here, we should consider how thinkers who affirm this
reading of Aristotle might respond to challenges that Aristotle's texts themselves present.
These challenges resemble those presented by the Platonic dialogues, which, to my mind, are
currently enjoying a renaissance of fruitful thinking about, e.g., the performative, literary, and
dramatic character of the dialogues over and against a debatable reading of Plato as a
Platonist who holds doctrines, for instance, of the forms. While such a discussion about the
Platonic texts sadly exceeds the boundaries of this dissertation, they do provide a context for
ways in which attentiveness to the manner in which Aristotle proceeds in the Physics and
elsewhere threatens to tumble episteme from its lofty pedestal as the sole giver of knowledge
from an Aristotelian perspective.
Gareth Matthews notes, "Characteristically in his writings Aristotle gives the
impression of being totally in command. Although he thinks it vitally important to identify
the perplexities associates with a topic of investigation, he makes clear that he expects to be
able to resolve those perplexities [aporiai] before he quits the topic" (1999,134). Because
Aristotle is in such command, the aporiai (impasses, or "perplexities" to Matthews) he
encounters in his thinking, unlike those characterized by Socrates, does not denote a state of
puzzlement at all: "Aristotle's idea that we begin our inquiry by running through the
perplexities (diaporesai) is the idea of listing problems, difficulties, or puzzles, rather than
the idea of re-experiencing states of bafflement" (1999, 130). In other words, Aristotle lays
out "puzzles" so that he can resolve them, expecting that he will resolve them, and in fact,
doing so.
37
One longer passage from Barnes clarifies the ways in which one must read Aristotle,
if one has decided what Aristotle's aims of his own philosophical thought must be
characterized as the pursuit solely of scientific knowledge:
It is undeniable that many of Aristotle's treatises are, in large part, aporetic in style-
they do discuss problems, and discuss them piecemeal. It is also undeniable that the
treatises contain little or nothing in the way of axiomatised development. It is right to
stress those points. But it is wrong to infer that Aristotle was not at bottom a
systematic thinker. [... ] There are so many hints and intimations of systematization
in the treatises that the solution of aporiai cannot be regarded as the be-all and end-all
of Aristotle's scientific and philosophical enquiries; and-a point worth
underlining-even the piecemeal discussions of individual problems are given an
intellectual unity by the common conceptual framework within which they are
examined and answered. Systematisation is not achieved in the treatises; but it is an
idea, ever present in the background. (1982,38)
Such a (truly) thoughtful statement leads Barnes to conclude, "Aristotle does not ever, in his
treatises, boast of having completed any branch of knowledge. His achievement, great
though it was, inevitably fell short of his idea; and the Aristotelian system was designed with
the ideal in mind" (1982, 39). In other words, if we consider the role of aporiai in Aristotle's
texts, which we must undeniably do if for no other reason than we are confronted with them
time and again throughout most of Aristotle's texts, then we must do so with an aim toward
understanding how they move Aristotle's main argument along, not as they present
themselves as disruptive matters for thought to be encountered along the way. That is, we
must overlook these impasses, even if or as they encourage us to confront difficult
philosophical questions when and how they arise. Aristotle, insofar as he is in "control" of
his writings, thus uses aporiai to treat individual problems in light of a greater, unified whole,
a whole that is epistemic by nature as that toward which we ultimately aim in our
philosophical pursuits.
However, here I urge us to make a full stop before acquiescing to such a reading of
Aristotle: Given the breadth and depth of the aporiai that Aristotle encounters, it seems to
38
me that we ought to pay attention to them not solely because they belong to a greater, more
general, whole, but instead as they open philosophically rich considerations for Aristotle in
their own right. Rather than speak of Aristotle "in control" of his writings, then, I urge an
attentive reader to pay attention to how Aristotle follows philosophical questions themselves,
regardless of the "control" that Aristotle commands in his texts. In this way, Aristotle is like
Socrates, ready and willing to follow the logos wherever it may lead, even if it does not fit
neatly into an over-arching blueprint of his choosing.6
By considering how representative scholars approach reading Aristotle, I have now
laid the groundwork for turning our attention to tyche as it disrupts a coherent picture of
Aristotle as a fundamentally doctrinal thinker. Such a discussion reveals the stakes of tyche
in Aristotle's Physics, for if one considers it, like Aristotle does, as a deep aporia that is
worth bringing one to a full stop in a consideration ofphysis, then we must also reevaluate
the strength of contemporary scholarship to follow Aristotle through these aporiai, not in
light of an over-arching ideal, but instead as it presents itself for a matter of philosophical
thought as well. We must, in other words, encounter tyche as Aristotle does: With wonder
and attention to strangeness.
6 My claim that Aristotle genuinely encounters aporiai in (his own) thought such that he wonders at the
ideas he faces strikes me as more contentious than I originally thought. In a recent discussion with Myles
BUl11yeat, an Oxford and Cambridge Greek scholar and former chair of the Aristotelian Society (2005-
2006), I asked him what he makes of moments in Aristotle's work where Aristotle seems to be doing
something other than purely "systematic philosophy" that ends with certain epistemic knowledge, with me
suggesting that Aristotle often pauses to confront the aporiai in his own thinking, and that the way in which
Aristotle proceeds has everything to do with "what" Aristotle says. Professor Burnyeat countered my claim
by saying that Aristotle possesses a "divine intellect" that few can acquire, and thus that Aristotle's
"method" is not philosophically interesting, for it serves merely as propaedeutic to his "real" insights. In
other words, Aristotle does not encounter aporiai as true aporiai to struggle with and pursue, but instead as
"puzzles" to demonstrate for others why a given proposition or view cannot hold, laid out to demonstrate
the errors that common people experience on their way to knowledge. (February 27, 2008; quotation marks
denote actual words exchanged.)
39
In light of the representative ways to read Aristotle in general as illuminated by
Owens and Barnes, we can briefly note traditional ways that tyche and its related words
(automaton, kata symbebekos) are configured in the Physics in accord with such a reading.
In the Physics, we see Aristotle being challenged and confronted by tyche in laying out his
inquiry into nature, and the appearance of tyche in the Physics is where we can clearly see
Aristotelian commentators and scholars fracture in their thinking about tyche in the Physics
and elsewhere. If scholars pay any attention to Aristotle's thinking about chance at all
(which is rare), they generally fall into two camps: some subsume chance under teleology or
detenninism, arguing that nature or mind, insofar as they are purposive, deny the
phenomenon of chance as chance, even in Aristotle (cf. e.g., Simplicius 1997, Bolotin 1997,
Magruder 1969, Boeri 1995); others try to save room for rationality in light of mischievous
chance, citing Aristotle in saying that happiness can not simply be fortune because this would
completely misalign the role of rationality as we experience it as acting agents in the world
(e.g., Nussbaum 2001, Charlton 1985). However, there are some (read: few) who maintain
an openness to chance that deeply engages the phenomenon as it shows itself in the Physics
and elsewhere in the Greeks. This latter group (e.g., Massie 2003, Baracchi 2003, Burger
1988, and Long 2004) is interested in reading Aristotle as dialogical within his own texts, and
thus the possibility of chance playing an important role in the Physics remains open in such a
reading. Although these scholars do not all speak of chance explicitly, the way that they are
interested in reading Aristotle along the lines that I have outlined here promises to give us
insight into the Aristotle's legacy and ways of reading him now.
Yet, a predominantly representative way of reading Aristotle on tyche is presented by
W. Charlton, who says that Physics IIA-6 (Aristotle's most sustained treatment of chance in
this text) presents "a fairly straightforward treatise on chance" and "presents no difficulties"
40
in reading Aristotle. For Charlton, ascribing things to chance is our human mistake in
thinking that something does not act for some end when it actually does. The problem,
according to Charlton, lies with us finding things remarkable when we shouldn't; when we
expect something to happen and it appears to happen in a remarkable way that we did not
think it could, we ought to see that it secretly does admit of a purpose, even if we are too
dimwitted to see it. In these passages in the Physics, according to Charlton, Aristotle is
"careless" and "questionable;" he "ought to know better" than to claim that chance is
something that it is not, but he "is not very careful" in this section when writing about chance
(1985,105-108). Elsewhere scholars display displeasure on Aristotle's own tensions on the
nature of causes in relation to the question offortune or chance. As Dominic Scott says,
"[u]nfortunately, [Aristotle's] treatment of this issue has proved extremely perplexing"
(2000, 211). And this kind of reading is not without its friends, for thinking about chance
and fortune in the first place is often at odds with any kind of philosophical inquiry.7
Furthermore, in attempts to render chance or fortune either obsolete or subsumable
into a purely logical framework, James Magruder, for example, says that "chance and fortune
are not causes in the primary sense for Aristotle, but are considered as 'incidental
7 Consider, for example, how Spinoza casts fortune as superstition in the preface to the Theologial-Political
Treatise, wherein he says that "if men could manage all their affairs by a certain plan, or if fortune were
always favorable to them, they would never be in the grip of supersitition." But, since "all men by nature
are liable to superstition," this superstition takes the following form: "[I]f, while they [people] are
tormented by fear, they see something happen which reminds them of some past good or evil, they think
that it portends either a fortunate or unfortunate outcome, and for that reason they call it a favorable or
unfavorable omen, even though it may deceive them a hundred times" (1998, 6-7). In other words, since
people cannot see in advance the consequences of their affairs, we naturally give over to superstition,
which is how we normally consider fortune; this is folly for us.
This lineage continues through Kant, who also disparages fortune and chance as blind and
unworthy of a reasonable investigation, saying in the Critique ofPure Reason that fortune and chance are
merely concepts which "run loose" without legality (1996, 142); we have no right to consider them. In his
Foundation ofthe Metaphysics ofMorals, Kant also says that a good will cannot be impacted by ill fortune,
i.e., that one's character surpasses the events that happen to happen to it, and that the ability of the will to
bring about a certain end is not prone in any way to chance. Rather, a good will "would sparkle like a
jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself' (1989, sec. 1.3).
41
causes' ... [t]hat may be put under a main heading, namely that chance and fortune do not meet
the logical requirements for the middle term (expressing the cause or reason) in a
demonstrative syllogism; hence, there can be no scientific knowledge of a chance event"
(1969,80). Continuing the picture of Aristotle we get from Barnes and Owens, there can be
no scientific knowledge of a chance event because chance stands in contrast to the regular
necessity of nature and knowledge; knowledge pertains to what is known with certainty, and
that which is known by certainty pertains to the essence of a thing. Thus tyche and
automaton are subsumable into Aristotle's greater schema, an ideal that, while remaining
unsatisfied, is omnipresent nonetheless.
As if thinking about chance specifically in Aristotle weren't scarce and problematic
enough, the role of chance in philosophy is often disparaged and has been since the Greeks.
Representative of the way in which fortune and chance are predominantly instantiated in
philosophy, Boethius' conversation with Lady Philosophy sheds light on what a rigorous
interrogation of chance must entail, especially given the problems that we've discovered
when thinking about necessity in nature. In The Consolation ofPhilosophy, Lady Philosophy
diagnoses Boethius' sorry state of imprisonment against Boethius' own lamentation of his
bad fortune, saying that Boethius' emphasis on his misfortune masks the true state of affairs:
he chooses not to admit his place (and thus fails to take responsibility for his actions) in a
well-governed universe designed by reason, which is the proper source of philosophy and
understanding. In order to investigate Boethius' mistaken assessment of his situation, Lady
Philosophy asks him a series of seductive questions in order to persuade him to reason's side.
Boethius finally admits that the course of the world is guided by reason, and that chance,
standing in strict opposition to reason, could never be the cause or effect of anything the
42
creator superintends. Delighted to hear this, Lady Philosophy, in the spirit of diagnosing an
illness to bring about health, thus says to him:
But thanks be to the source of health, for nature has not wholly forsaken you; your
true conviction of the government of the world provides us with the nourishment to
restore you to health, for you to believe that the universe is guided by divine reason,
and is not subject to random chance (1999, 20).
Thus the restoration ofBoethius back to his healthy self concerns the way in which he is to
take himselfup as one person in a well-ordered universe, and the consolation that comes
from this in knowing that his exile, imprisonment, and eventual death have a reason or a
cause comforts him in light of the unfortunate situation in which he first thought himself.
After all, if the whims of fickle fortune rule over people's lives then, precisely speaking, we
can make no sense of fortune or chance, if they do exceed the thinkable, and especially if
they stand in opposition to philosophy.
But what is fortune, such that it stands contrary to reasonable thinking in this way,
and what is chance, such that superstition quickly lends itself to its side? The kind of
thinking of which Lady Philosophy is wary is something that the Greeks know well, yet
Aristotle's discussion of chance in the Physcs and elsewhere, and Phaedo's admission of
tyche mentioned before in the Phaedo-especially when considered in light of Socrates'
admission in the Greater Hippias that his own philosophical practice might be a matter of
tyche-demonstrate a serious engagement with it, one which is subsequently ignored.
The first thing to note in the Physics IIA regarding tyche is the intensified and
powerful language that Aristotle uses to describe tyche and the problems that it causes in his
thinking. Three words-aporia (impasse), atopos (strange, or out-of-place), and thaumazein
(to wonder)-while not being utterly unique to this passage (in fact, they illuminate the text
at its most decisive moments), slip by unnoticed to interpreters of Aristotle who insist on
43
reading Aristotle doctrinally. The fact is that, because of the language that Aristotle uses
here, and because of the way in which he proceeds in his inquiry, Aristotle himself must
wonder at the appearance of tyche in his discussion of nature. That this discussion occurs
just after Aristotle names the four ways that things come-into-being is significant: What
about Aristotle's own account of the "four causes" is somehow unsatisfying in how we
understand the world?
In laying a philosophically fruitful foundation for his discussion, we can note that,
loosely said, automaton stands in opposition to the workings of the heavens, but tyche might
playa role among human concerns insofar as human beings are firstly situated in nature as
well as in an inquiry into it. To this end, we might note that the Physics itself is a puzzling
work: Neither simply a scientific investigation into the nature of the cosmos (for there are
too many demands put on the reader to be such a doctrine) nor a traditionally understood
"first philosophy" qua metaphysical text, the Physics maintains the tension at play in this
section of the work between tyche and automaton insofar as Aristotle seriously grapples with
both, both seem superstitious (or at least anti-scientific) to our minds, and both lead to deeper
aporiai that must be undergone or suffered without coming to a definite-i.e., certain or
dogmatic-conclusion.
The key to understanding Aristotle on this point lies in resisting Lady Philosophy's
enchantment of Boethius and in remembering Heidegger's assessment of modern
philosophy's insistence on certainty. For Aristotle, tyche most certainly sustains a
fundamental relationship to life. As we will importantly see, aitiai and logoi are both
explanations of events as we stand in relation to them, and thus our inquiry into nature is
characterized by the comportment that we have both to it and to ourselves. It may seem
strange to read the Physics as anything other than an inquiry into non-human nature, but I
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submit that Aristotle is doing just this, especially in these passages on tyche. When
describing ways that things happen or come to be, for example, Aristotle says that "of things
that happen, some happen for the sake of something and some not (and of the former, some
in accordance with choice [kata proairesis], some not in accordance with choice, but both are
among things for the sake of something), so that it is clear that even among things apart from
what is necessary or for the most part, there are some to which it is possible that being for the
sake of something belongs" (phys. 196b20). In introducing choice-a particularly human
concern, as becomes evident especially in his Nicomachean Ethics-Aristotle explicitly links
tyche with the ability to deliberate and make choices. Tyche, according to Aristotle, is
concerned with human actions, and thus shows itself in the praxis of human life (phys.
197b3), insofar as we deliberate and make choices for ourselves. As such, tyche is indefinite
or unbounded (ahoriston, Phys. 197a25), necessarily paralogou (phys. 197a19), and bears
upon our human place in the cosmos. Aristotle says that "thinking and tyche concern the
same thing, for there is no choice without thinking" (phys. 197b10), differentiating between
tyche and automaton insofar as the first relates to human beings and the latter to inanimate
and non-human beings in nature, who stand in no relation to tyche on account of their lack of
deliberation and ability to make choices. This is significant because it occurs after Aristotle
notes that our inability to see in advance and ahead of ourselves the consequences resulting
from our choices and actions, dramatically impacting how we make an inquiry into our
human nature, for making choices and thinking bear upon our human orientations to the
world and to ourselves.
As I mentioned before, Socrates himself instantiates the significance of tyche in
Greek thought, for it is he who characterizes his philosophical practice in terms of tyche,
which leads him, like Aristotle in his Physics, to an aporia. At the end of the Greater
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Hippias, a text to which I return in the next chapter, Hippias asks Socrates what good the
arguments that they just had about the beautiful (to kalon) amount to. His suggestion is that
their conversation (and, by implication, Socratic philosophical practice) amounts to nothing
but foolish and idle chatter. To this assessment, Socrates replies,
My dear Hippias, you are blessed because you know the things a man ought to
practice, and have, as you say, practiced them satisfactorily. But I, as it seems, am
possessed by some crazy tyche (daimonia tis tyche), so that I am always wandering
and perplexed, and, exhibiting my perplexity (aporia) to you wise men, am in tum
reviled by you in speech (logos) whenever I exhibit it. (Gr. Hip. 304C)
Socrates' own logos here concerning his philosophical practice accounts for the dramatic
difference between his manner of inquiry versus that of Hippias, whose insistence on definite
explanations and categorizable accounts of beauty betrays the kind of philosophical inquiry
that couches Socrates' understanding of his philosophical practice. Particularly striking in
Socrates' account is how Socrates acknowledges that his relationship to tyche stands in
opposition to other kinds of logoi that his interlocutors might offer, linking his philosophical
practice through tyche to aporiai that he experiences.
This is not unlike Aristotle's own encounter with tyche, as I have begun to sketch out
here and as we shall continue to see in this and the following chapter, for the aporiai that
Aristotle encounters in his inquiry into nature in the Physics couch his philosophical
investigations. Neither simply in opposition to necessity, reason, and certainty, the role of
tyche in Greek thinking points to a peculiarly Greek phenomenon: the relationship between
tyche and philosophy. If Socrates explains that the character of his inquiry is determined by
how he understands himself in relation to tyche, then we might ask how this bears upon how
we might otherwise think of the Greeks, as Bacon does, in being misguided philosophers who
simply fall short of real philosophical insight concerning the nature of the cosmos and of our
human role of it. Socrates' admission recalls Phaedo's strange logos that Socrates' extended
46
stay in prison is aided by tyche, something which Lady Philosophy's insistence on reason and
order cannot admit.
The implications of this sort of thinking are many and varied: Ifwe take tyche
seriously for the Greeks, then we must read them in light of the aporiai that they experience
when trying to order their thoughts in relation to tyche as a phenomenon in human life. To
say this dramatically, we might pose a question as follows: What is the difference between
Boethius' stay in prison and Socrates',? How we respond to this question determines the
character of our own inquiry into nature and points to how we stand on the natural road in
Aristotle's account ofphysis.
Section II
Necessity and the Natural Road
The first mention of necessity (ananke) in Aristotle's Physics occurs in the very
beginning of the text when Aristotle says that "it is necessary to lead ourselves forward in
this way: from what is less clear by nature but clearer to us to what is clearer and better
known by nature" (Phys. 184a18-20). This, he says, is the "natural road" (pephuke hodos)
we must follow if we wish to become acquainted with (gnorizein, Phys. 184a) and have
knowledge (episteme, Phys. 184al0) of nature, especially pertaining to its various origins
(archai, Phys. 184aI5).8 It is through our acquaintance with the archai and aitiai that
understanding about nature comes to us (ginoskein, Phys. 184a5); i.e., through the way in
which we already are oriented to the task at hand we will come to understand something
8 While outside the scope of the discussion here, it is important to note the differences, from a Greek
perspective, between gnorizein and episteme, i.e., what it means to be familiar with or recognize something
as opposed to having epistemic knowledge about that thing. Perhaps the best reference for this distinction
and the force of it lies in Plato's Theaetetus, at the beginning of which Socrates recognizes Theaetetus
when he walks toward Socrates and his teacher, Theodoms, who fails to recognize his own student (Theae.
144C). Theaetetus is familiar to Socrates in some way, whereas Theodoms' insistence on episteme and
geometry as the two primary, ifnot only, ways of knowing.
47
about nature itself. This "nature itself," however, is importantly not a static entity that stands
before human life like an object to a subject;9 rather, it is the play between the two-nature
and human nature-that emphasizes the importance of the in-between for an investigation
into nature: Neither divorced simply from nature itself nor capable of determining the whole
of it, the ways in which we already find ourselves on the natural road determines the
character of our investigation into nature, or into what is. IO
Putting it plainly, for Aristotle, that nature is, would be ridiculous to try to show
(Phys. 193a3); hence, an inquiry into nature demands that we comport ourselves to how it is
already disclosed to us, as we emerge from physis and are tied to it. The stakes, for Aristotle,
are high, for we could not only come to understand the many ways in which physis is
articulated in or as beings, but also the ways in which understanding these things are possible
9 Echoing these sentiments, Russell Winslow, in a very recent book, says about the Physics that "Aristotle's
method of discovery betrays a structure that cannot be described as either empirical or conceptual; indeed
we must unhinge ourselves from these oppositional categories if we are to think what I believe is the very
exciting, if curious, structure of revealing what something is (ti esti or to ti en einai) in Aristotle's world-
whether physical, metaphysical or ethical" (2007, 20). This point contrasts, for example, Otfried Hoffe's
assertion that "what Aristotle himself puts into practice [is] an interest in the richness of the particular that
can only be investigated empirically" (2003, 28). Whereas Hoffe urges readers to emphasize the empirical
commitments that he sees Aristotle holding, Winslow also urges us to consider how Aristotle's texts
demonstrate a "way of thinking about rational disclosure that breaks down the dualistic oppositional
paradigm of the knowing subject and its object," which is "a necessary step in order to see the access to
truth through the dialogical" (2007, 8) While Winslow's ultimate goal is to demonstrate how logos, as a
twofold structure, binds to-and, in a certain way, "is"-physis (2007, 23), we share a same concern about
bringing modem philosophical dichotomies to Aristotle's texts, preferring instead to let the texts speak for
themselves as much as possible.
10 In the Metaphysics, Aristotle puts the situation this way, when speaking about how one ought to receive
any given logos and be attuned to different ways of speaking: "[I]t is absurd to be searching at the same
time for knowledge (episteme) and for the direction to knowledge; and it is not possible to get either of the
two easily" (Meta. 995a12-15). That is, in order to search for a given aim, one must be in some sense
acquainted already with the desired end; one cannot ask both the "what" of a situation and for a way to
understand what is at stake in it; one cannot ask for a definition of a nonsense word; one cannot ask for
directions to an undetermined place. This point becomes important when we tum to the end of the
Nicomachean Ethics, wherein Aristotle speaks quite cryptically about the possibilities of becoming good at
all or in the first place. His discussion there hinges, in large part, on how it is that we are predisposed or
habituated in certain ways in advance ofourselves, demanding a kind of uncanny self-knowledge or trust in
things beyond our control.
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for us, if we follow Aristotle or lead ourselves down the natural road. Such a movement
down the natural road, however, demands already an engagement withphysis, such that we
might say that nature is already on the road to it. In other words, in resisting a subject-object
dichotomy foreign to Aristotle, we might say that it is physis itself that allows both for our
inquiry into it inasmuch as physis denotes what's possible for, or is in, such an inquiry. This
tripartite structure ofphysis, then, follows a Heideggerian hermeneutic circle, which
demands, as he does when considering art, that we enter into this circle, aware that our
understanding ofphysis hinges on our ability to maintain the horizon ofphysis as our inquiry
into it demands.
On one hand, Aristotle's comments on the pephuke hodos fall in line with a typically
Greek comportment in philosophical investigation from that which is familiar to that which is
unfamiliar, as when Socrates' inquiries lead from endoxa, what is commonly or familiarly
said to be true, to paradoxa, that which goes against and/or deepens that which is commonly
held to be true. In this sense, Aristotle might simply be pointing out that it is impossible to
do other than this in his inquiry, for what would it mean to proceed from that which is
absolutely unclear and unfamiliar to us to that which is clear and familiar? Such an inquiry
would likely be absurd, akin to knowing the deepest mysteries of life without ever having
been born. However, this passage deepens the question of necessity by considering what it
might mean for something to be clear to us without being clear to nature and how it is that we
can-let alone must-move from that which is clear or familiar to us to that which is clear by
nature and not to us.
Just two sentences after this first mention of necessity in the Physics, Aristotle
reformulates the necessity of our procedure as follows: "[I]t is necessary to proceed from
what is general to what is particular, for it is the whole (katholou) that is better known by
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perceiving (aisthesis)" (Phys. 184a28-29). Here, Aristotle again discusses a necessary
procedure that investigators of nature must follow in order to reach some kind of
understanding of nature. I I The necessary movement from the whole to the particulars
resonates with other passages in Aristotle, wherein he speaks about the impossible necessity
of apprehending the whole of something before examining its parts, an impossibility that
clearly highlights the difficulty of speaking at all of nature. In the same way, Aristotle says
that no one is completely capable of knowing or speaking the whole of truth (aletheia), but
neither does anyone completely miss it (Meta. 993b); thus, we always stand in relation to the
entirety of the thing in question, though none of us is capable of the entirety of truth itself.
The same thinking follows for Aristotle on this point, for it would seem odd to say that we as
human beings are simply removed from the whole of nature, as it would seem odd to say that
we are completely capable of knowing it in its (or our) entirety. Thus we find ourselves
already in relation to something that exceeds our knowledge or capabilities by virtue of the
human nature that we are.
To this end, what's most striking about the first two mentions of ananke in these
opening passages of the Physics is that they determine the character of our own investigation
in the Physics-that is, the way in which we undertake and understand the road before us in
our investigation of nature-and thus we can put many questions about our inquiry into
nature to Aristotle: To whom (or what) does one appeal in following the pephuke hodos, and
how does Aristotle speak with such certainty about his method? Is it truly necessary to "lead
ourselves forward" in the way he proceeds to outline to us, both from what is clear to us to
II We might say, tentatively, that the way to understand this passage is in relation to the one just discussed
insofar as this first discussion in the opening lines of the Physics aptly characterizes the ways in which an
investigation into nature must engage the archai, aitiai, and stoicheia (elements) of a given task but also
see those elements to be "of' something excessive to that which underlies them (Phys. 184a), but which
appear nonetheless in and through our method (literally, meta-hodos, or through-road).
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what is clear to itself and from what is according to the whole to what is according to its
parts? And is it the case that there is only one method one can undertake or abide in order to
make an inquiry into nature? These questions strike at the heart of what it means for
something to be necessary, both with and without qualification, i.e., both in relation to
something or someone else (e.g., a given context or series of events) and what it means for
something to be necessary haplos (simply, or to itselt), a word that he uses, e.g., when
speaking about the relationship of nature to itself.
Aristotle's insistence on the necessity of our method from things that are clear to us
to things that are clear haplos is peculiar in light of what he next says. After discussing the
kind of inquiry in which we should find ourselves when making an investigation into nature,
Aristotle seems to abandon the natural road almost immediately, speaking not about things
that are clear and familiar to us as we might expect him to do, nor about how it is that we
perceive the whole of nature, but instead about the necessity of archai themselves being one
or more than one (Phys. l84b 15), which is the third appearance of ananke in the text. Might
Aristotle anticipate too much in laying down this claim about the archai of things?
According to the first sentence of this inquiry, Aristotle notes that it is possible, through our
acquaintance with various aitiai (causes or explanations), archai, and stoicheia (elements) to
come to an understanding of nature. Following this thought, it is through the delimitation of
the archai of nature that one can become familiar with nature, Aristotle suggests, but this
method may be inappropriate to human beings: it is not the natural road that he has said we
should follow. He thus contrasts this method of inquiry~i.e.,that of an inquiry just into the
sources of nature-to the inquiry already discussed, i.e., an inquiry down the natural road
from that which is adelos (unclear) to us to that which is clear in itself. In other words, if we
are to follow the natural road-as Aristotle says that we must, by necessity-then this will
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not take the shape of zeroing in on the ways that archai are meant immediately; rather, it
seems as though we must proceed, on Aristotle's terms, from something familiar before
making claims about how archai are meant, what and how many they are, and how they
impact or determine our inquiry into nature.
And so we must ask why Aristotle, like Alice, does not take his own advice. At issue
here is the status of a natural inquiry, whether this inquiry is necessary for us or not, and, we
might suggest, whether the inquiry itself into nature is, like the archai already at play, one or
many. One way of responding to this question is to say that what it means to make an inquiry
into nature is to make an inquiry into the underlying archai of nature, and thus the positing of
different archai is necessary at the beginning of our investigation. Another response might
be that the archai themselves are matters for inquiry and, as such, have yet to be determined
and thus might culminate in being a way to understand nature, if what Aristotle says
regarding proceeding from the general to the particular holds true. Yet another response
regarding the status of a necessary inquiry into the archai of nature would suggest that what
it means to investigate an arche in the first place is to both assume it as prior to one's
investigation and to seek it through the investigation into nature. Thus, the status of archai in
Aristotle's inquiry might be both as that which precedes the inquiry at hand and as that which
eludes us through our investigation into the nature of things. Thinking about archai in this
last twofold sense is consonant with how we might fruitfully think ananke on our natural
road as that which precedes us in our inquiry and as that which stands before us a matter for
thought. This double nature becomes most evident in Book II of the Physics, when Aristotle
turns his attention explicitly to ananke itself.
If we must, by necessity, proceed in our inquiry into nature the way that Aristotle
says that we must, then we might wonder whether necessity itself is a cause of our
52
investigation or if necessity is the end or goal of it. If it is the case that nature is simply that
which happens by necessity, and any other way of things coming-to-be would be impossible
(and hence unnatural), then nature is simply the way things happen such that no other way
would be possible. This line of thinking leads to conclusions that Aristotle is a
fundamentally teleological philosopher for whom nature is ultimately purposive and
determinately causal. However, to read Aristotle as only saying this-or as saying this
unproblematically-is to overlook the complexity of Aristotle's thought. Consider
Aristotle's discussion in Book II, wherein he says,
One must say, first, why nature (physis) is among the causes (tou aition) for the sake
of something (hou heneka), then, about the necessary (tou anankaiou), how it holds a
place among natural things (tois physikois). For everybody traces things back to this
cause, inasmuch as, since the hot and the cold and each thing of this kind are by
nature a certain way, these things are and come into being out of necessity (ex
anankes). Here is an impasse: what prevents nature from doing things not for the
sake of anything, nor because they are best (beltion), but just as Zeus rains, not in
order that the grain might grow, but out of necessity? (Phys. 198b10-17)
To tease out a strand of these complicated ideas, let us follow Aristotle's thinking here as it
emerges from within the context of necessity as we have just discussed it, i.e., regarding the
human place on the natural road of an inquiry into nature, and let us do so in light of
Aristotle's insistence, throughout this text, that nature is for the sake of something. Why is it
the case that, in an inquiry into nature, we must begin our inquiry again, saying first why
nature is among the causes for the sake of something and is not itself that for the sake of
which things happen or come to be? This question seems to sidestep an inquiry into nature
for a different, more overarching goal of situating nature itself in light of something else
(e.g., intelligence, mind, nous). This "something else," then, might become the guide of our
inquiry, rendering the Physics a "metaphysics" and our inquiry into nature an inquiry into
efficient causality as a mean to an altogether different end.
53
Ifwe remember, however, that the Physics begins with an investigation into the
archai and aitiai of nature as nature appears to us in order to see how it appears to itself, then
we can situate ourselves in a natural inquiry here in light of they ways in which we ourselves
must, by necessity, proceed down the natural road from that which is clear to that which is
unclear. How we understand ourselves on this road has everything to do with the character
of our inquiry: Are we investigating causes as they precede us and determine the character of
our investigation? Are we investigating causes that are decidedly removed from human
interests and concerns? Or do we seek causes themselves as the ends of our discussion?
There is a way in which one can hear Aristotle as questioning those who say that everything
happens by necessity in nature, and thus he investigates possible objectors in the passage
above as offering an "impasse" (aporia) that pauses Aristotle in his thought. If it is the case
that everything that happens, happens by necessity, and that necessity itself, when aligned
with nature, is the cause of all that comes to be, then it seems that any kind of human inquiry
would be rendered moot in light of a deterministic view of the cosmos. However, such is not
Aristotle's understanding. To the contrary, Aristotle says that nature is among the causes of
things that happen, that things appear to us differently than they do to themselves (which
becomes utterly decisive in Aristotle's discussion of chance), and that it is possible that the
cosmos does not operate by some grand design, or even for what is best.
To read Aristotle as holding open possibilities in his thinking such that he even
comes to impasses (like Socrates does throughout the Platonic dialogues) is to decide that
Aristotle is fundamentally an inquirer. We can see that necessity is not just that which
happens by nature (because necessity itself can be a matter for inquiry), that the causes of
nature as well as of our investigation are many and varied, and that Aristotle's insistence
upon moving from that which is clear to us to that which is clear haplos is not itself clear.
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The deepening of Aristotle's inquiry into nature thus demands that we take into account how
we are situated on the natural road in order to see what kind of inquiry it is in which we find
ourselves, for the character of our comportment determines the horizons of understanding.
Overlooked in this section is what the word aitia means and how it significantly bears
upon Aristotle's Physics. In this word that we encounter another paradox in Aristotle's
thought: How is it that an aitia both precedes us and stands before us as a matter of inquiry,
not unlike the status of necessity in Aristotle as I have discussed it? In the next section, I
suggest that aitia has been much maligned in readings of Aristotle, and a close look at this
important word unveils a significant link between it and the logos as it pertains to a natural
inquiry: What does it mean to discover a "cause" in nature, and how might we think of
causation in Aristotle at all? How we answer this question bears upon how we think of
necessity in Aristotle and, more importantly perhaps, how tyche in Aristotle stands on the
natural road, tapping her foot, patiently waiting to disrupt our inquiry.
Section III
Aili" and Logos: Two Explanations
The decisive relationship between aitia and logos in Aristotle's Physics is
simultaneously obvious and opaque. On one hand, as Aristotle instructs us throughout his
corpus, we acknowledge at separate times that both aitiai and logoi are explanations or
accounts of some sort, and that our acquaintance with certain kinds of logoi and with various
aitiai are necessary for our understanding. Remember, for example, that the very beginning
of the Physics, wherein Aristotle notes that our acquaintance with aitiai are required for
understanding anything at all (Phys. 184alO), lays the foundation for an inquiry into physis
(nature), and consider also that Aristotle often, like Socrates, praises things that are eulogos
(well-said), as is the case in this same text when he praises those who say that all things must
55
depend on original contraries. 12 On the other hand, aitia-generally translated narrowly yet
vaguely as "cause," sometimes more generously and fruitfully as "explanation"-presents
itself in the narrow translation as an account that is primarily "scientific" more than it is
primarily explanatory (consider, e.g., how Aristotle's so-called "four causes" are largely
taken by subsequent thinkers to be physical accounts or mechanical manifestations of how
things come to be).13 Cause, in this sense, does not necessarily entail an explanation-or
even require the "cause" to be the reason why something else happens-but instead is
subsumable under the dubious heading of scientific necessity, which, on its own terms, is not
a why but a what-a fact-in a chain of events.
This narrow definition of cause is readily opposable to, say, Socratic philosophical
practice and Socrates' attempt to wrangle the best logos from his interlocutors (both living
and dead) and from himself, i.e., his attempt to give the best account of meaningful physical
and other things. Yet I submit that both aitia and logos, in their richest senses, lay claim to
being able to give explanations or accounts of how things come to be and happen,14 and that
how we consider the relation between these two words for Aristotle fundamentally
determines the manner in which we read his Physics as either the scientific pursuit of
12 See Phys. 1.5 throughout, especially on the relation between archai and logos (Phys. 188b).
13 Many scholars from different philosophical camps now recognize the importance of a sensitive
translation for this word, though there is disagreement about which translation might be best. Richard
Sorabji, e.g., notes that "Aristotle's so-called four causes are best thought of as four modes of explanation"
(1980,40); J.L. Ackrill notes that the four causes "might better be called a doctrine of the four 'becauses',
and that "[m]uch unjustified criticism of Aristotle's doctrine would have been avoided if the word 'cause'
had not been used in translations. [... ] [T]he four so-called 'causes' are types ofexplanatory factor" (1981,
36). Pascal Massie notes that thinking aitia in its juridical sense also allows us to think of it as an
accusation or charge, thus furthering the notion of aitia as something other than merely a scientific cause in
a chain of events (2003, 15). One could imagine, I suppose, a scientist being able to demonstrate that x is
the cause ofy without needing to say how or why the priority of x is the case, maintaining just that it is the
case. However, to read Aristotle in this way is to assume that he is primarily a modern scientist, which he
is not.
14 Whether these accounts actually happen or not is another matter.
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certainty, or as being engaged primarily in an inquiry concerning nature with an emphasis on
the overlooked role of the logos. Thus, by taking a close look at the links between aitia and
logos in the Physics we can begin to see what it means to give an account of something
coming-to-be at all or in the first place. In so doing, I will illustrate the power of this
relationship in a small section from the Phaedo in order to ask ourselves how and why it is
that Socrates ends up spending as much time as he does in prison.
Aitia is better translated as "explanation" than as "cause," and the sense of
"explanation" at work here derives from the primarily juridical sense of the word in which it
was first employed in the Greek. Following the juridical sense, aitia means something like
"to be responsible" in a crime, and then is used in judgment: a criminal is accused or asked
to be and then is or is not held responsible for her actions. In this sense, we may say that the
crimes in question are or are not caused by the defendant; however, to use that word without
the sense of responsibility entailing explanation, the cause of the crime may result in simply
finding a stricken match in a house fire to be "responsible" while a truer account of the crime
lays in being able, in the first place, to give an account of the action as it comes to be and is
executed (and thus, in what sense it results in what we call a "crime" at all). In translating
aitia as "cause" or "explanation" or "account," we are asking, at base, for what or who is
responsible for a given event, if such an account can be given, such that we may know what
or who is responsible for certain erga (deeds) and logoi (speeches) and whether or not such
explanations and inquiries are truly significant.
In the Physics, the difference between aitia as a cause in the ordinary physicalist
sense and its force as "explanation" culminates in the beginning of Book II, wherein Aristotle
schematizes the different ways in which things come into being. His first distinction
concerns things that come into being by nature (i.e., things that have their sources of motion
57
and rest in themselves) or by techne (productive knowledge, skill, or craft), wherein the
source of motion and rest lies outside the thing itself; a house does not make itself any more
than it grows out of the ground or falls out of the sky.15 While the distinction between physis
and techne here is important and worthwhile in its own right, for my purposes, it serves
mainly to frame Aristotle's discussion of how things come into being such that both a human
being and a table can be said to have or participate in a kind of nature, in addition to
delimiting how we might usually consider the Physics to be primarily, ifnot only, a scientific
enterprise. In fact, Aristotle calls us to consider in this very text the many ways in which
physis is said, from ousiai that have their source of motion within themselves (i.e., what we
might nonnally call "natural" beings) to things that have their source of motion or cause of
being in another, like things from techne. "[I]f techne imitates nature," Aristotle says, "and if
it belongs to the same knowledge to know the form and the material to some extent [... ], it
would also be part of the study of nature to pay attention to both natures" (Phys. 194a12-27).
In other words, the horizon of the Physics demands not only that we consider things that
come to be by nature removed from our participation or hand in it, but also that we consider,
as Aristotle does here, how things come to be in other ways, which are not contrary to nature,
but participate in whatever it is that we might mean by "nature." Again, the emphasis here is
not on some inquiry divorced from our human place, but instead is on the ways in which we
give accounts of nature itself, insofar as we already participate in the movement ofphysis.
Aitiai, thus, do not give themselves freely to us, but are also the aims of our inquiry,
concerning all of the ways in which things come into being.
15 I will return at the end of this manuscript to a very important third way in which things come into being,
which is by poiesis, wherein the end or aim of a thing is excessive to that very thing insofar as its end is in
another, as is the case with poetry and Greek tragedy.
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The Phaedo provides a striking instance of the dramatic intensity ofthis question, so
let us turn to it now.
Socrates notes that in his youth Anaxagoras failed him in his search for aitiai
detailing why anything comes to be or perishes (Phae. 97B). Most absurd, Socrates says, is
the explanation (aitia) that Anaxagoras would probably give for him being in prison, i.e., that
it is through the mechanics of bones and sinews that Socrates finds himself in his cell at the
end of his life. This sort of explanation, according to Socrates, is not a true one (aletheos
aitios, Phae. 98E). A true explanation, by which Socrates does not mean one that is just
correct and verifiable, but one which, in its disclosure, strives to the best possible explanation
consonant with the way we have outlined the word from its juridical sense, would need to
take into account, among other possible "causes," the judgment of his fellow Athenians and
Socrates' own choice to accept, in some way, his punishment (Phae. 98E). Without
explanations including these elements, a mere physical account of causes is "too absurd"
(atopos, or "out-of-place," Phae. 99A) to sufficiently account for Socrates' prison presence,
let alone how anything else might come to happen. Keeping in mind that Socrates and his
interlocutors, through the logos, seek the aitia of generation and destruction-"no trivial
thing" (95E), he says-Socrates advises the following:
[I]f somebody should want to discover the aUia concerning each thing-in what way
it comes into being or perishes or is-he'd have to discover this concerning it: in
what way it's best for it either to be or to undergo or do anything whatsoever. Now
by this account [logos], it befits a human being, in this matter and in all others, to
look to nothing but what's most excellent and best (Phae. 97D).
In detailing to his interlocutors the questions that would need to be raised concerning that
which is most excellent (to ariston) and best (to beltiston), Socrates alerts us that no physical
account will suffice for a proper explanation concerning both the situation in which he finds
himself and how anything at all comes to be. It is always a question, for Socrates, and not a
59
matter-of-fact, what the "best" or "most excellent" account might look like,16 and in this
passage we see that the best explanation would be the one that is most truly revealing to the
thing in question, recognizing that the task of our best logos must take up and follow the best
aitiai, which will not qualitatively be a series of physical events but instead has much to do
with how we stand in light of such logoi. 17
So how is it, then, that Socrates ends up injail? Ifwe follow Socrates' half-bared
logos on this point here, we may conclude that it is through the judgment of the Athenians,
when coupled with his acceptance of their punishment, that he finds himself in jail. But this
doesn't seem to go far enough in its explanation: Oughtn't we consider the reasons for which
Socrates is brought up on charges as well? And shouldn't we inquire into the healthiness of
his person such that, at such an old age, he even is alive? And if we consider these things,
shouldn't we also consider a whole host of others that might help us understand the cause of
Socrates' being in prison, and mustn't we ultimately give a logos of Socrates' life itself?
Socrates' response to these questions is (as we might know) to turn to the logos and
make a second sailing (deuteron ploun, Phae. 99D), fed up with an inquiry into beings (onta)
that, in short, fails to consider the being in question in favor of an infinite regress to the
mechanics of "what" causes something to happen. In other words, in turning to the logos,
Socrates abandons not an account of how things come to be (which is the matter of the
discussion at hand, with his situation being just one-albeit very important-example), but
16 We might even ellide both aUia and logos here, and say that it is always a question for Socrates,
regardless of the kind of account, what it means for something of its kind to be the best. Hence his inquiry
into both aitia and logos on this matter.
17 We might take this further and suggest that no logos can be pursued at all which merely deals with these
kinds of supposed explanations. As John Rist points out, there is no naked argument in philosophy (1996,
362), for "truth has as much to do with the character of our premises as with the precision with which the
relationships between them are worked out" (1996, 360). Thus it is that an explanation or account will both
attend to the character of the matter at hand (including its pursuit-worthiness) and will, I submit, attend to
our philosophical character as well.
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instead enriches what it means to give an account and understanding of beings in their
happening at all. Thus, in turning from beings and becoming as objects, which Socrates'
account of Anaxagoras would do (i.e., in presenting them as decidable objects of inquiry,
which can eventually-and scientifically-be settled), Socrates reminds us that the "cause"
of generation and destruction, as well as the cause of his own situation, already implicates us
insofar as we are claimed in our inquiry as part of the matter at hand, not opposed to it.
To this end, our current obsession with causes in their correctness and certainty might
be as Heidegger suggests: Since the Greeks, our philosophical insistence on certainty
prevails and thus reinforces what I translate to be the mistake of aitia as "cause." Heidegger
says that added to the mistaken notion of absolute certainty is the following: "[T]his
development stems, not from science's attempts to procure its distinctive manner of access to
its subject matter, but instead from an idea that existence fabricates for itself, to a certain
extent from an intelligence that has gone crazy" (2005, 33). In reading the Greeks we must
attend to Socrates' insistence on turning to the logos as an attentiveness to being insofar as
we take up the question of our being in any inquiry, suggested by his recollection of his prior
obsession with Anaxagoras. A failure to do so results in an unnatural divide between the
"object" for inquiry and our own state of being, as if our inquiry could exist without the
significance of the matter at hand.
These passages from the Phaedo help us deepen the inquiry into the intimate
relationship between aitia and logos in Book II wherein Aristotle speaks of the "four causes,"
and let us remember the Socratic warning to us about amputating aUia from logos.
At the end of Physics 11.2, just before turning to the so-called "four causes," Aristotle
says that it is the work of first philosophy to mark out the ways in which human beings beget
human beings from the way in which the sun begets human beings, for the two ways of
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begetting here are certainly not the same (Phys. 194b 15ft). To say that the sun simply begets
a human being is like saying that Socrates is in jail because of his bones and sinews: this is
an incomplete and insufficient explanation of how something significant significantly comes
to be. Reminding us that his inquiry is for the sake of understanding (phys. 194b 18),
Aristotle turns his attention to examining the aitiai necessary for an inquiry into nature in its
manifold senses. Like Socrates, Aristotle emphasizes that we must examine various aitiai to
understand generation and destruction, as well as to understand "every natural change" (tes
phusikes metaboles, Phys. 194bI4-16). Can this be accomplished, if at all, through a divorce
between the cause as an object over and against our inquiry? No, says Aristotle. In fact, in
the second sense of aitia that Aristotle notes, aitia reveals itself as "the form or pattern
(paradeigma), and this is the gathering in speech of the beings (ti en einai), or again the kinds
of this [... J and the parts that are in its articulation (logos)" (phys. 194b25-30). Here the link
between aitia and logos becomes explicit: By forming aitia as paradeigma and paradeigma
as logos, we might say that this trinity reinforces the many ways in which physis itself is
meant in Aristotle's inquiry, for it is here that we see Aristotle's resistance to simple
mechanical accounts of nature without a significant logos. Differently put, Aristotle here
emphasizes the very explanatory nature at the heart of aitia when it significantly is the logos
at stake in our inquiry.
Let us not forget what we examined with our inquiry regarding the Phaedo and how
it is that we can speak both of aitia and logos as accounts that are responsible in various
ways, from being responsible for an event to being responsible in the logos to each other and
to our philosophical inquiry into nature. After briefly outlining the three other ways in which
aitia is said (i.e., the "that out of which something comes into being," the "that from which
the first beginning of change or rest is," and the "that for the sake of which" [Phys. 194b30-
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35]), Aristotle turns his attention to the ways in which we speak of a thing being responsible
for an event and how we stand in relation to this responsibility: "[T]he present thing is
responsible for this result, and we sometimes blame it, when it is absent, for the opposite
result, as the absence of the pilot for the ship's overturning, whose presence was the cause
(aitia) of its keeping safe" (Phys. 195a12-16). Our countenance regarding a given event is
not neutral, but instead is judged by us to be responsible for events that take place. Now
certainly we may be mistaken in our accounts, but such is the task of the logos regarding the
ways in which aitiai are meant, for Aristotle, like Socrates, makes many new beginnings,
which is to be expected given that Aristotle notes time and again that aitia itself is said in
many ways (cf. Phys. 195a5, Phys. 195a30). I take Aristotle, in these moments, to be really
emphasizing the said character of events such that we ourselves, in our inquiry, must already
stand engaged with the way things come to be and perish. An important foundation for all
philosophical inquiry in Aristotle, i.e., is the willingness to take up vigorously the ways in
which aitiai are said, especially if an aitia is, in one sense, fundamentally a logos and
paradeigma, and if it is responsible and blameworthy in other respects. Aitiai, then, are
possibly said in as many ways as the logos itself is and are not relegated even to being just
four in number or kind in Aristotle (Phys. 195a5; Phys. 195b12).
Something now must be said about the ways in which logos appears in the Physics,
for it is true that I've provided many possible translations for it: account, speech, reason, that
which is said, explanation, and word among them. Is this problematic? On one hand,
certainly, for if aitia is meant in many ways in Aristotle, logos is meant in at least as many,
and the debate over how to translate logos is long and fervent in Greek scholarship,
especially concerning the Platonic dialogues. However, my point in reminding us of the
many ways in which logos is meant in Aristotle is to bring to the fore an oft-overlooked
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emphasis on the logos in Aristotle that, in my reading, links together with aitia to serve as the
responsibility of serious philosophical inquiry. If aitia is merely cause divorced from the
logos, as seems to be the case with our most scientific Ancient thinker, then we may need not
ask the place of philosophical inquiry at all in nature; we need only get out our micro- and
telescopes and get to work. However, if it is the case that, as Aristotle says, "each thing is
meant (legetai) when it is fully at work (entelecheia), more than when it is potentially" (Phys.
193b8), then the gathering of the logos, especially in relation to slippery aitiai, takes a
prominent place in Aristotle's thinking, something which is generally reserved these days for
Plato scholars.
Returning, finally, to the sense of aitia as responsible explanation and its place in
Aristotle's Physics as one of being an account-giver, much like the logos generally is, let us
reconsider the move that Socrates makes when he abandons his study under Anaxagoras.
Does Socrates simply tum from an inquiry into aitia to the naked logos? No. This would be
simply exchanging one empty pursuit for a vacuous equal whereby logos itself might just
translate into argument, whereby the worth of the matter at hand and the challenge of
discerning the best logos need not be considered. Per the question we asked at the beginning
of this section-namely, how it is that Socrates ends up in jail-we might answer according
to Socrates' own advice to his interlocutors when asked if they can do anything for him. He
responds that the best thing they can do is "to live, as it were, in the footsteps of the things
said now and in the time before" (Phae. 115B), and we might pontificate that Socrates takes
his own sincere advice, doing exactly this-living in the footsteps of the logos-and that this
aitia might serve as that which is responsible for Socrates' stay in jail. However, if we deem
even this explanation insufficient, perhaps it is time to take seriously Phaedo' s overlooked
logos in the beginning of his dialogue concerning why Socrates ended up in jail for so long
(and thus why we have the Phaedo in the first place): "A bit of chance [tyche] came to his
aid, Echecrates," he says (Phae. 58A).
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CHAPTER III
THE STRANGE AND WONDERFUL PLACE OF TYCHE AND AUTOMATON IN
ARISTOTLE'S PHYSICS II. 4-6
The aim of philosophies used to be to explain the world.
-Kristeva (1984, 178)
In the last chapter we saw how contemporary Aristotelian scholars who pursue a
totalizing and systematic account of Aristotle's thought fall short in thinking about the place
of tyche in the Physics. In offering an alternative way of reading Aristotle that tries to
reorient our philosophical attention to what I see as Aristotle's commitments to aporetic
moments in his thinking as well as to normally rigidified words, like logos and aitia, I have
tried to lay the groundwork for Aristotle's explicit tum to tyche and automaton, to which we
shall also tum in this chapter as well. In order to have a discussion about how these words
appear in the text, however, it was necessary to lead ourselves down the natural road in order
to determine what is asked of us in making an inquiry into nature. Thus the work of the last
chapter: To speak of tyche requires a particular kind of mindfulness and attunement, which,
if we're careful, we can already see appearing in Aristotle's discussions of ananke,physis,
and the way that things show themselves to us.
This chapter is devoted to continuing the discussion of Aristotle's Physics by turning
to Aristotle's most sustained consideration of tyche in Physics II. 4-6. While this
consideration is difficult, as we shall see, it would be nearly impossible to have without the
framework of the last chapter in learning how to navigate Aristotle's inquiry into nature.
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Beginning with how one is always situated within a given horizon, we will see how Aristotle
wonders at his predecessors' thinking about chance in order to see how it informs Aristotle's
own thought regarding the strangeness of tyche and automaton. Doing so will allow us to see
the important role of kata symbebekos as it elucidates that which pertains to human life
regarding how one makes an inquiry into nature. After laying out these ideas, I conclude that
tyche, on the heels of and in relation to kata symbebekos, speaks to what's possible for human
life insofar as it signifies that which pertains to dianoia (thinking) and proairesis (choice).
Such a discussion culminates in a demand that we turn to the Nicomachean Ethics in order to
articulate the ways in which tyche speaks most fundamentally to human nature, as I shall do
in the next chapter.
Section I
Aristotle and His Predecessors
Like Socrates' remembrance of Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, Aristotle too engages his
predecessors by examining the ways in which they have contributed to various logoi and
aitiai concerning how things come to be in light of our investigations into them. 18 Most
noteworthy about the beginning of Aristotle's sustained discussion of tyche in Bk. II. 4-6 of
the Physics-arising, not unimportantly, just after his discussion of the "four causes"-are
two things: the attentiveness with which Aristotle engages his predecessors on thinking
about chance, and the way in which Aristotle himself speaks about tyche as it is related to
wonder (thaumazein) and strangeness (atopos). These two discussions are interwoven in
18 For example, Aristotle begins his Peri Psyche (On the Soul) with an extended discussion of how previous
thinkers have considered material aspects ofpsyche; likewise, the Nicomachean Ethics engages Heraclitus
and Plato, among others; the Poetics opens with thinking the difference between Horner and Empedocles.
Since Aristotle says that "it is right to feel gratitude not only to those whose opinions one shares, but even
to those whose pronouncements were more superficial, for they too contributed something, since before us
they exercised an energetic habit of thinking" (Meta. 993b1 1-14), we can see how paying attention to
things previously said can not only inform our "own" thinking, but help us recognize how it is that "we
have inherited certain opinions from certain people" but are also "responsible for bringing them [the
opinions] about" (Meta. 993bI9).
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Aristotle's work, and I will treat them side-by-side in order to examine how it is that
Aristotle's engagement with his predecessors informs his own thinking while giving him
pause to consider the role of chance in our lives. Seeing how Aristotle's thoughts on those
who come before him inform his own discussion of tyche in relation to the place it plays in
his text illuminates the possibly uncanny, or strange, ways in which he speaks of tyche, and
why he is compelled to do so.
Aristotle begins his discussion of tyche in Bk. II by saying that "many things are said
to be and to come about through tyche or through automaton [randomness]" (phys. 195b30).
Given that Aristotle has discussed the possibilities of aitiai relating to an inquiry into nature
in the text up to this point, Aristotle wonders if tyche and automaton can rightly be said to be
among the ways in which things come into being, or can be aitiai at all (phys. 195b32-35).
Important in this opening line is the way in which Aristotle not only suggests the possibility
of tyche as an aitia, but also the way in which what is said impacts the ways in which human
beings think of the character of a cause. As I said in the last section, the relationship between
aitia and logos is only dichotomous if we read aitia as a purely physicalist cause, unrelated to
the ways in which we speak of things coming into being and the ways in which we seek to
explain phenomena that appear to us. So Aristotle's endoxic starting point concerning tyche
engages the ways in which many things are attributed to tyche or automaton, recalling the
ways in which we must begin with what appears to us as outlined in the beginning of the
Physics. Thus it is that Aristotle considers tyche and its related word, automaton, to be aitiai
in the ways in which I've sketched, and we must ask, as Aristotle does, about the relationship
between tyche and aitia: Is, or can, tyche be said to be responsible for things that happen in
the world, and (how) can it determine how things appear to us? Is tyche, Aristotle wonders,
among the ways in which things come to be?
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In order to ask and respond to this question, Aristotle begins by saying that the main
problem when speaking about tyche culminates in a formidable aporia: People simply do not
know how to respond to tyche. The fundamental mistake, Aristotle says, is that people either
attribute everything to tyche or nothing at all to it; for Aristotle, a third way of understanding
tyche might be possible and even necessary. Those who fail to consider tyche do so because
they demand a "definite cause" for all events, a certain aitia that would then give a full logos
for events as they happen (Phys. 196a3). These people mark out boundaries in advance we
might say, for what is possible and what is not possible in nature, limiting what an
"acceptable" cause might be or look like; they make a horizon or demarcate boundaries
("definite" is horismenon) in a way that possibly precludes fruitful thinking about strange
things.
Aristotle's example to demonstrate this point is clear. For those who say that nothing
at all comes from or is related to tyche, an unexpected encounter with a friend in the
marketplace is caused by a person going to the market in the first place; the encounter is
secondary to the primary cause of the event. Since the market-goer did not intend to find or
see her friend, the aitia of finding this friend lies in going to the market; finding her friend is
kata symbebekos, or "incidental" (a word that will become quite important in the next
section). At best, we might say, finding one's friend is a nice surprise (Phys. 196a3-5). For
this market-goer, then, "there is always something to take as the cause" (Phys. 197a7), but
not tyche, for to speak of tyche as a cause would be most strange (atopon) indeed (Phys.
196a8).19
19 The reasons for which tyche as aitia seems strange, though, may not be because tyche must function as
some sort of fifth aitia, a lost cause that then explains the universe. As we will see in the Nicomachean
Ethics, Aristotle is skeptical of what we "attribute" to tyche, saying that "what is greatest and most
beautiful to be left to tyche would be too dischordant" (EN I099b25). However, we are not yet in a
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Regarding this example, Aristotle seems unsatisfied both with the market-goer who
wants to attribute nothing to tyche or consider it in any way as he does with those who would
attribute the surprise-find at the marketplace to tyche. For Aristotle, neither approach
suffices as explanatory for how it is that we engage the world. It is after this example that
Aristotle affirms the strange and wonderful place of tyche amidst commonly held opinions
and those who have preceded him: "it would seem strange [atopon], and truly so [alethOs],"
for tyche to be anything at all (Phys. 196a6-8). Yet those who dismiss tyche, as many have
done and continue to do, are "to be wondered at" (thaumaston). Before turning to the
relationship between tyche and wonder, a brieflook at strangeness in two Socratic instances
might help us speak to the strange role of tyche in the Physics.
In Plato's Apology, Socrates says that he is unaccustomed to the courtroom, for he
has never been on trial; he is a-topos ("out-of-place," "strange," "uncanny," or maybe even
"absurd"), a stranger. His presence in the courtroom is prima facie obviously strange by
virtue of his inexperience in such a setting, such that from his perspective, he is out-of-place
according to himself, given the ways in which he has lived thus far. Socrates makes this
point known to the men of Athens, saying that "I am simply a stranger" (zenos, Apo. 17D) in
the courtroom, both as someone who has not been on trial before and according to customary
ways of speaking in such a situation. Thus Socrates appears strange in at least two ways: 1)
Socrates' trial is strange to himself, disrupting his usual philosophical practices; 2) Socrates
appears out-of-place to the men of Athens, who are not accustomed to Socrates' manner of
speaking as he does throughout the trial any more than they're truly accustomed to Socrates'
position to fully examine such a statement, if for no other reason than we don't know with whom such a
statement resonates, and why.
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philosophical practice in Athens. Socrates, thus, recognizes his own strangeness in the
courtroom as he recognizes the strange ways that he appears to others.
Secondly, in the Phaedrus, Socrates says that it would not be atopos for him to reject
the truth of the mythos concerning Boreas and Orithuia (that Phaedrus asks him to speak to),
as many previous thinkers have done before (Phaedr. 229C); he could simply dismiss, as
many wise men have, the power of the mythos and its suggestive seduction/abduction
possibilities. He does not do such a thing, however, and instead speculates as to what an
investigation into the truth of the mythos might entail (e.g., weaving stories about chimeras
and pegasuses [Phaedr. 229E]) before returning to the question of his own nature, to which
he responds mythically, wondering whether his nature accords with Typhon, a terrifying
mythical beast, or whether it is gentler and somehow more divine (Phaedr. 230A). While the
exchange between Phaedrus and Socrates concerning the status of the Boreas and Orithuia
mythos is complicated, what's important to note for our purposes are the ways in which
Socrates again notes the strangeness both of his predecessors' response to the myth and to the
ways in which others fail to respond to the myth's "truth," whatever sort of strange truth it is
that might emerge.
These two examples not only point to the ways in which Socrates emphasizes the
importance of that which is atopos, but also the ways in which, ifone wishes to speak truly,
that which is strange must show itself and be part of a conversation. Thus, when Aristotle
says that it would seem truly strange for tyche to be anything, we must consider the place of
tyche in his thought, as Socrates urges us to do in relation to the truth of his defense and in
relation to the mythos in the Phaedrus. For the Greeks, strangeness is often accompanied by
wonder, for as Socrates does in the Greater Hippias, Aristotle too wonders at the strange
place of tyche in previous thought as well as in his inquiry into nature.
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Aristotle says, "many things both come about and are from tyche and automaton"
(Phys. 196aI3); subsequently, we must wonder at those who fail to attribute anything at all to
either tyche or automaton. Yet, Aristotle notes that some of his predecessors have done
precisely this: In spite of making use of tyche as Empedocles does, for example, tyche is left
aside as a mere nothing in a largely elemental worldview (Phys. I96a20). Furthermore, tyche
can never be a cause in the ways that his predecessors desire, for even though some have said
that parts of animals come to be by tyche (Phys. I96b22), such a view also renders tyche a
nothing by overlooking different ways in which things can be said to be responsible for
physical beings in the world.
In addition to those who attribute nothing to tyche, Aristotle also considers those who
have attributed or do attribute everything to tyche in a way that tyche becomes responsible for
the very generation of the cosmos. Rather than simply dismissing such a view, however,
Aristotle says that "this itself is in fact mightily worth wondering at" (kai mala touto
thaumasmai axion, Phys. 196a30).2o Those who hold this view, however, do not offer a
Lucretian cosmology falling out of a chance principle, like the clinamen, to create the whole
of nature; rather, even "the heavens and the most divine of visible things have come from
automaton" (Phys. 196a35) for these people. These predecessors do not attribute the genesis
of beings to tyche in a certain sense-i.e., human beings beget human beings and don't come
to be by chance-but in another sense, automaton is attributed to that which is exemplary or
20 It is worth pointing out that the verb thaumazo-, can be linked to wonder not just as perplexity, or
something to overcome in order to reach true knowledge, but also to something beautiful, or kalos. In fact,
one might wonder most at a phenomenal beauty, be it in nature or in speech, and thus wondering maintains
possible connections not only to things that are beautiful and amaze us, but also to things that are well-said
(eulogos), as Aristotle might be suggesting his predecessors are to be wondered at and admired for their
fine but strange speaking about the cosmos.
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divine in its appearance to us; we might say that automaton, like tyche, is that which is
fundamentally atopos, given the ways in which we generally offer accounts of the universe.
Remarkable to this point is Aristotle's language after considering the ways in which
tyche or automaton is said to be responsible for nothing or for the whole of the cosmos as his
predecessors have, and more remarkable still is the intensity of the language of strangeness at
the end ofBk. II. 4, before he turns to his lengthy discussion of tyche, automaton, and
ananke, as we shall do in a moment. Aristotle says, in relation to those who attribute
everything to tyche:
[I]f this is the way things are, this itself is worth bringing one to a stop, and it would
have been good for something to have been said about it (kai ka/(js exei lexthenai ti
peri autou). Regarding what is said about these and other things, what is said is
strange (pros gar to kai alios atopon einai to legomenon), and it is stranger still (eti
atopateron) to say these things when one sees nothing in the heavens happening by
chance (to legein tauta horantas en men to ourana), but many things falling out by
fortune among the things not assigned to fortune, though it would surely seem that
the opposite would happen (en de tois ouk apo tyches polla sumbainonta apo tyches.
Kaitoi eikos ge en tounantion gignesthai). (Phys. 196b)
Among many important points in this passage, first we can note the relationship between the
way things are or might be and the duty a philosopher has to speak about things in how they
appear to us. In the first line, Aristotle notes that ifwhat his predecessors have asserted is
true, then a logos ought to have been investigated or taken up to explain how it is that one is
led to conclude that the cosmos is determined by tyche. Recalling the beginning of the
Physics and how it is that I've urged us to consider Aristotle as a thinker for whom inquiry
holds the greatest sway, and remembering too the ways in which we are already situated on a
natural road in our inquiring process, we can see how Aristotle himselfwonders at the logoi
his predecessors have and have failed to offer regarding the generation of the cosmos. The
point here is that, in this first sentence, Aristotle so marvels at his predecessors' vision of the
universe that he suggests coming to a full stop and investigating what they could possibly
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have meant by attributing either everything or nothing to tyche or automaton. The
relationship between the matter for inquiry, then-physis-and the way in which we engage
in such an inquiry is clear: To offer or assert a claim about the nature of the cosmos is
insufficient, in Aristotle's understanding, for articulating what's at stake in the matter for
inquiry in the first place. In other words, we can see Aristotle pointing us to a kind of
comportment and responsibility one has in making an inquiry into nature, a comportment that
resounds mightily with the character of a philosophical inquiry in the first place (as we shall
see in the Nicomachean Ethics).
In the rest of this passage, Aristotle relies on both atopos and its intensification,
atopoteron, in order to drive home both the strangeness of his predecessors in not offering
logoi that explain their assertions about tyche and automaton, and as a way, I think, of bring
tyche and automaton to the fore of our discussion, thus finding a place in nature. As I have
intimated, that which is strange is not simply or merely out of place such that it is simply
divorced or removed from a given subject matter; rather, that which is strange, as Socrates is,
belongs very much to the discussion at hand in possibly determining the place-character of
the discussion insofar as it significantly creates horizons for all possible thought. Socrates'
strangeness, for example, does not simply denote an anathematic relationship between
Socrates and Athens; rather, it is Socrates himself who helps determine the character of
Athens itself, the very place and home that, on one hand, loves him, and on the other hand,
puts him to death. Likewise, in this passage from Aristotle, tyche and automaton are indeed
strangers, but only because, as Aristotle notes, his predecessors failed to pay sufficient
attention to the ways in which they operate phenomenally in our lives and in an inquiry into
physis; it is not a matter of simply not-belonging in such a discussion.
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To put it another way, what is a stranger, if not a reminder of how something can
disrupt another thing that supposedly has its own integrity, or how can something appear in a
strange way, even in a city? If tyche is a stranger in a discussion ofphysis, as Aristotle
suggests, then it is a stranger in many ways: It disrupts what we normally consider to be a
natural inquiry, filled with either a given purposiveness in nature (call it divine intellect, or
mere teleology); it challenges physicalist views of the cosmos, given that many things,
according to Aristotle, appear to us to be from tyche or automaton; it reaffirms predetermined
boundaries for inquiry, forcing any discussion of tyche to appear, on the face of it, as outside
the boundaries, and in, at best, another horizon from the perspective of one who is not a
stranger, or from the perspective is what is not strange. Tyche thus belongs and doesn't
belong in an inquiry into nature. It belongs insofar as tyche is one way in which things
appear to us in nature (and thus has a kind of home in the Physics); yet, as strange, it asks that
we interrogate the character of our inquiry, attending to ethical (or human) dimensions of this
line of thinking, particularly regarding, as we shall see in the next chapters, human choice
and thinking. Perhaps because of the suggestive blurring of the distinctions between nature
and ethics when considering the strangeness of tyche, Aristotle notes that the problem with
his predecessors is that none of them wondered at the place of it in physis at all, and their
failure to wonder amounts to their unwillingness to offer a logos of tyche; thus they neither
speak nor speak well about it at all.
Noteworthy to this end is Aristotle's own strangeness when encountering tyche and
automaton, for if it is the case that his predecessors have failed in their accounts of these
phenomena, and if Aristotle truly wonders, as he says he does, why no one has adequately
given an account ofthese things before, then Aristotle's comments on tyche and automaton,
to which we shall now tum, offer the first sustained logos of them in (Western) philosophy
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(disregarding Socrates' own suggestive words throughout the dialogues). Many medieval
Aristotelian commentators, from Alexander of Aphrodisias to Simplicius, have picked up on
Aristotle's discussion of chance in Bk. II, but they do so, as we shall next see in the case of
Simplicius, with an eye for an overarching divine cause organizing and guiding the cosmos;
thus, tyche and automaton remain inherently subordinate to, e.g., divine nous or a
purposively teleological view of nature. That these commentators sustain their own
discourses on chance, however, remains strange, regardless of their conclusions about it,
given that Western philosophy overall remains silent on the role of tyche in nature (or in
ethics, or in metaphysics).
Section II
Tyche and Automaton in Physics II. 4-6
"[Neither] [tyche] nor [automaton] could be the causes of anything that comes-to-be,"
Simplicius writes in his commentary on Book II of the Physics, for "of all things that come-
to-be the causes are determined" (1997,88). As a result, determined causes underlie all
things said to occur by chance, whether we admit that this is the case or not: "Anything that
leads to a paradoxical conclusion is itself paradoxical, so that it would seem paradoxical for
[tyche] and [automaton] to be the cause of any one of the things that come-to-be" (1997,88).
For Simplicius, the paradox lies in tyche or automaton being the cause of anything that
comes-to-be because the very nature of tyche and automaton ultimately stands contrary to a
teleological system guided by design, or nous (mind), which in the end determines the
workings of the cosmos and the coming-into-being of everything in it. Thus it is that, for
Simplicius, when we speak of the "reality of [tyche]" (1997, 88), what we are really talking
about is an event that happens without our input or choosing, like unintentionally shooting
(as Dick Cheney might have it) or spearing (as Simplicius has it) your friend (and your
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friend's subsequent death) when your intended target was a nearby animal. What happens in
this situation, according to Simplicius, is that we speak of this incident as being one of tyche,
for we can't discern any reason for the event any more than we would ever say that a person
meant to kill his friend. So, from our point-of-view, the incident occurred without our
choosing and without a discernable reason, and hence we (mistakenly) attribute its cause or
explanation (aitia) to tyche.
Interestingly, Simplicius' thinking in his commentary maintains that tyche does play
a role in the cosmos concerning how it is that we human beings orient ourselves, even if we
mistakenly attribute tyche to be a cause or explanation for things that happen to us and to
each other. In light of Simplicius' insistence on a teleological system in Aristotle, it is the
case, nonetheless, that tyche emerges as a particularly human orientation toward the world, a
reliance on which diminishes as we become more skilled, ethical, thoughtful, and reflective
in our lives. Consider, for example, the following statements from Simplicius on this matter:
"[Tyche] is to be found where the products of both art and nature display deficiencies; for
example, in the case of medicine, [tyche] slips in where skill fails to reach" (1997,94). In
other words, according to Simplicius, for those who are bad or unskilled doctors, tyche plays
a large role, for an unskilled doctor can "happen" to cure a patient; for good or skilled
doctors, tyche doesn't factor in-know-how takes over. While Simplicius seems to have
Aristotle's statement in the Metaphysics in mind here (wherein Aristotle says that
"experience makes techne, but inexperience makes tyche" [Meta. 981 a2-3 J), his point is that
tyche does not playa role in the most noble people who have the most noble (and skilled)
natures; those who have deficient natures, however (be it in skill, ethical comportment, or
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weak intellect), see things coming to be and passing away-even in nature itself-on account
of tyche. 21
This sort of thinking-i.e., a thinking that maintains a teleological determinism in
Aristotle over and against the powers of tyche-resounds finnly not only in medieval texts,
but in modem thought as well. The idea that "chance is for the sake of something," as
Marcelo Boeri puts it (1995, 88), shows that one of the main problems underlying thinking
about tyche in Aristotle remains its relationship to teleology, an insistence on the
purposiveness of nature. According to Boeri (and,primajacie, in opposition to Simplicius),
"chance and teleology are not opposite concepts but are, on the contrary closely related" (88)
because chance is not contrary to nature but is itself-in being for the sake of something-by
design: "[E]verything is ordered to some end," Boeri writes, because "natural processes [... ]
are determined not mechanistically but by design" (1995, 90).
Furthermore, Otfried Hoffe says that "Aristotle relates both kinds of chance [tyche
and automaton] to a purpose that is, however, reached or missed in an irregular, unpredicted,
and unplanned way. Consequently, he considers as given an either-or form of teleology, or
rather deficient modes, assigning automaton to physis and tyche to techne" (2003, 78). On
one hand, Hoffe correctly identifies what Aristotle does do in the Physics insofar as Aristotle
hashes out a discussion of chance regarding both nature and human affairs (in this instance,
what pertains to techne, or productive knowledge); on the other hand, Hoffe, in this passage,
detennines nature to be altogether divorced from human affairs, a reading that 1'd like to
resist. This train of thought, however, continues through Russell Winslow's assertion,
regarding Aristotle's discussion of tyche and automaton in the Physics by saying, "[i]f chance
21 However, we will see Aristotle reformulate this relationship between techne and tyche later on, when we
see that the emergence of tyche importantly happens in concert with those who have techne and also with
those who are engaged with poiesis.
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were something primary and central to the causality of nature, then we would be replete with
examples of 'monstrosity,' or with instances of animals coming to be from plants and from
beings whose form betrays a mixture of the forms ox and human or dog and rose. Indeed,"
Winslow continues, "if chance were to rule as a cause, it would not be considered 'chance' at
all but rather 'consistent' and 'for the most part.' But this is not the case in Aristotle's
world." This reasoning leads Winslow to conclude that "chance cannot be a cause of a being
or occurrence in nature always or for the most part and, if it cannot be said to be a cause
always or for the most part, chance cannot be a primary cause" (2007, 41). The debate, then,
seems to be settled regarding the possibility of chance as an aitia: Since physis is primarily
what's always or for the most part, then tyche and automaton cannot playa role in nature, for
the very definition ofphysis includes regularity and repetition, against which nothing can
come to be by nature.
However, Aristotle's thinking about tyche and automaton counters Simplicius, Boeri,
Hoffe, and Winslow, among others, but maybe not for the reasons we might normally offer,
i.e., that tyche is something "contrary to nature," at best, or a cause to be subsumed under an
overarching teleology or divine purpose. Rather, what these thinkers miss, in my estimation,
is an account ofphysis in Aristotle's text(s) such that the place of chance in a natural inquiry
makes sense. To this end, and against Russell in particular, we might call upon Emerson,
who in "Old Age" says, "Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young
shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters" (1862, 136). Or we might
think of Baudelaire, who says, "Nature produces only monsters" (1952,129). What Emerson
and Baudelaire offer that the others do not is, in my estimation, quite Aristotelian: We
ourselves must be open to possibilities and actualities that present themselves to us, both in
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human nature and physis writ large, for otherwise, as Emerson keenly notes, we might simply
grow old, predictably with aged hearts.
I turn, then, to Physics II. 5-6 with particular attention to a consideration ofphysis
that eludes many commentators. Over and over again, we see Aristotle perplexed at those
who fail to consider chance in nature or in our lives, from the wise men who precede him to
prevailing opinions of his day. Yet Aristotle himself could not be any clearer regarding a
necessary investigation into chance, saying that "it is clear that tyche or automaton is in some
way" (Phys. 196b17). We know, Aristotle says, that some things happen in a celiain way
always or for the most part, just as, e.g., my tulips stretch toward the sun, or my sister is sure
to speak of her dogs when we talk. It doesn't seem likely for chance in any sense to be the
cause of these events, whether these things happen by necessity and thus always in the same
way, or for the most part. However, "other things besides these happen [or 'come to be,'
gignetai]" (Phys. 196b15). We might suggest, prematurely, that these "other things" make
all the difference regarding Aristotle's thinking about the relationship between chance and
nature. But let's get there.
Of the things that come to be (gignetai), some come to be for the sake of something
and some not (Phys. 196b18). Of things that come to be for the sake of something, Aristotle
says that some pertain to choice (proairesin) while others do not. Both ways in which things
come to be, according to this initial division, remain among things that are for the sake of
something. This initial description marks a formative horizon for the rest of Aristotle's
discussion, for it is here that we see a human being emerge in a discussion ofphysis by virtue
of how it is that our choices and decisions come to light in a discussion of chance. Thus we
have a first clue regarding the relationship between human beings and physis, hearkening
back, perhaps, to the natural road: In things that come to be at all, we find human choice.
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Provocatively, given that Aristotle initially discusses tyche and automaton as challenging the
ways in which things normally happen (cf. Phys. 196b10), it might seem strange, and rightly
so, for choice to emerge in a discussion of things coming into being, even if for the sake of
something: What is it about chance that belongs to human life in such a way that we, as
human beings, belong to nature in this discussion of things that seem to happen irregularly, or
that seem atopos in nature itself?
What it means for a thing to come to be "for the sake of something" responds, in part,
to the perplexity with which Aristotle encounters his own thought. To be for the sake of
something is not merely a fulfillment of a physical manifestation of a given potential, like
Aristotle's insistence that an acorn fulfills its nature in becoming an oak tree. Rather,
Aristotle explodes this scientific explanation to include both thought (dianoia) and nature:
"And for the sake of something are as many things as are brought about from thinking or
from nature [esti d' eneka tou hosa te apo dianoias an praxthele kai hosa apo phuseos]"
(Phys. I96b24-25). In other words, while I will not elide human nature with nature itself, I
also understand Aristotle here to be speaking to how human choice is always already situated
in physis, such that it is proper to speak of choice in a discussion ofphysis. Thus, Aristotle
importantly brings human beings' praxical engagement with physis to the fore: We cannot,
and must not, divorce ourselves from questions of nature. Again, an inquiry into physis, as I
intimated at the beginning of this section, is also always an inquiry into our nature as well.
Thus, understandingphysis entails, we might say, a reflective movement not only from things
that appear to us to things that are haplos, but also to the ways in which things that appear to
us occur from their self-showing as well. Physis is then like chance-a phenomenon, to itself
and to us.
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Section III
The Role of Kala Symbebekos
Whenever things happen or appear incidentally (kata symbebekos), Aristotle says, we
say that they are disclosed by tyche (Phys. 196b25); that which is incidental belongs, then, to
tyche. That is, when considering the ways in which both thought and nature can be for the
sake of something (dianoia for a given end or good, as we shall see in the Ethics, or nature
for itself, in my estimation-i.e., the telos ofphysis is none other than physis itself), Aristotle
notes that another possible relationship in physis or dianoia can happen: to one thing,
infinitely many incidental things belong (Phys. 196b27-28). For example, Aristotle says, the
aitia of a house is a builder's techne, for without the builder, no house would come to be.
However, Aristotle says, when we think of things that are kata symbebekos, like being pale or
educated, or, we might say, an educated pale person, these "attributes" do not stem from what
a thing actually is; rather, an indefinite number of things come to be kata symbebekos.
Were I to give what seems to me to be the standard Aristotelian reading of this
passage, I might say something like this: That which is incidental, insofar as it fails to belong
necessarily to the nature of a thing in its existence, does not speak to the essence of a thing.
For example, that I am a tallish woman with sometimes blonde, sometimes brown hair is
incidental to my nature as a human being, such as being a shortish, balding man would be
incidental to the nature of a human being, especially if one considers what we actually do:
As a philosophy graduate student, my tallishness, for example, has nothing to do with my
being such a student, except incidentally, and the ways in which I possess an indefinite
number of accidental qualities demonstrates how they cannot participate in who I am
essentially, for my nature must correspond to what I actually do, not to the qualities that I
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possess. Likewise for the shortish, balding man: He also studies philosophy, and neither his
hair condition nor his height has any bearing upon his studies.
On one hand, such a reading seems right: To speak of attributes in such a way such
that they determine the character of our actions, or our character in the first place, seems to
overshoot the mark. It does not matter-or does not matter very much, one might say-what
happens kata symbebekos; what we are interested in is the aitia of something. We must strip
things down to their essential nature in order to speak with scientific certainty about what a
thing is.
This kind of thinking might hold were it not for two important factors: First,
Aristotle has, at this point, already granted tyche as a way in which things come to be,
against, e.g., a metronomic regularity of the "four causes" in explaining nature. Second, the
examples that Aristotle himself gives concerning what counts for an instance of that which is
kata symbebekos are deeply puzzling, which, in my mind, highlights the importance of
accidental or incidental relationships in and through nature and our thinking about it.
The force of the first point above is clear, for by granting tyche a place in his
discussion of nature, Aristotle tells us that such a strange presence belongs with us on our
natural road into an investigation of nature. Thus, tyche marks something as it makes things
visible to human beings, even if we don't know what this "something" is (yet). Second,
Aristotle's three examples involve the aitia of a house being in the builder (i.e., in another
thing from the object produced) and how a person can incidentally be pale or educated.
Certainly, the house could not come to be without a builder, architect, etc.: But in what way
is this person truly the aitia of the house? We would not want to say that the nature of a
house is its builder, even though it could not come to be without this person. Thus, the
builder seems to be an efficient cause of the house. If the traditional reading above holds,
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then what takes center stage is none other than the essential nature of a thing, such that
epistemic knowledge, once achieved, will not only give us a universal rendition of various
ousiai, but will also grant the possibility of this knowledge in the first place.
When thinking of that which is kata symbebekos, however, and its role in the ways
that things show themselves to us, we might fruitfully remind ourselves of the fourfold senses
of being (to on) in Aristotle as he outlines in Metaphysics IV (Meta. I003a31-1 OI2b32),
where Aristotle says that being is said in many ways (Meta. I003a2-3). In offering a fourfold
distinction among beings and within being itself, Aristotle marks out "incidental being" (that
which is kata symbebekos), being in the sense of "being true" (on hos alethes), being (on) of
the categories, and potential and actual being (on dynamei kai energeia). What interests us
here is the first way of thinking being, which is, we might say, the ways in which being
relates to others and to itself. Kata symbebekos, we might say, is the very relationship of
beings in their configuration in the world, such that, while I may be a tallish dark-haired
woman at this moment, the manifestation of kata symbebekos relates not only me to others
(such that I can be identified as such a woman), but also me to myself; it is the way in which
I show myself to others and to myself. As such, while this method of self-showing is
incidental, it remains, nonetheless, a way in which (my) peculiar being becomes visible.
Franz Brentano says, "[s]omething has accidental being by virtue of the being of that
with which is it accidentally conjoined. By contrast, independent being (on kath' hauto) has
being because of its peculiar essence" (1975, 6). Yet could one not argue that the "peculiar
essence" of a being shows itself in the ways that it is, kata symbebekos? Brentano uses the
example of a four-leafed clover to make his point, saying that there is proof in "exceptional
cases" that incidental relationships fail to signify the essential unity and nature of a thing:
"Clover has three leaves in most cases, but not always; hence in individual cases in which it
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has a different number of leaves the conjunction is accidental. Clover has four leaves kata
symbebekos, not kath' hauto ['according to itself] (1975,8). That is, the nature of clover is
such that it usually opposes four leaves; however, when such a relationship between clover
and four leaves appears, we say that this relationship is incidental to the nature of clover:
"Four-leafedness as such has its peculiar being, without which it would not be what it is; but
the clover inasmuch as it has the being offour-leafedness is an on kata symbebekos" (an
'incidental being')" (1975, 8). The relationship between the nature of clover as three-leafed
sometimes happens to intersect with the being of four-leafedness. While this experience
happens-and we consider ourselves lucky when it does!-we thus speak of a certain kind of
opening, or monstrosity, in nature.
Regarding Aristotle's Posterior Analytics II.8, Brentano says that if we know that
something is kata symbebekos, we do not truly know what or that it is; it is only a thing by
name (1975,8). That is, we specially name a "four-leafed" clover, rather than speak simply
of a "clover," which implies three leaves. For this reason, Brentano says, "no science deals
with the on kata symbebekos, since nothing that belongs to an object kata symbebekos can
contribute anything to the understanding of its nature, and [... ] it is not possible to have a
science of something which happens only accidentally on a few occasions" (1975, 8). The
reason for which one cannot have a science of something that only happens sometimes is
because science (I'm understanding episteme here) aims for universal knowledge, which
requires not only regularity, but necessity in some thing's being what it is, such that the
essence of the thing can be known by virtue of its unchanging knowability; this essence is
fundamentally prior to the relation of beings. To this extent, Brentano is surely right: a
necessary and universal knowledge of that which is strange and irregular in nature seems
impossible, for one never knows when one might find a four-leafed clover. .. or (a) Socrates.
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Yet, insofar as Aristotle aims at giving a logos of what is, or being, such a logos
entails that we consider not only what a being is according to how it normally is in nature,
but also how beings show themselves in these incidental relationships, not only as they arise
inphysis, but also in thinking and choice (as I've noted). The belonging together ofphysis
and dianoia, then, provides a clue for how we might respond to Brentano's configuration of
kata symbebekos as laying outside an epistemic wrangling ofphysis, for while "it is possible
for it to seem that nothing comes about from tyche" (Phys. 197all), there are, nonetheless,
ways in which things relate to each other without having a definite cause such that these
relationships establish their own peculiar being. Or-and perhaps better-the relationships
among beings multiply and complicate how we speak of aitiai in the first place.
Keenly, Aristotle explains the relationship between dianoia and physis concerning
that which is kata symbebekos through an example of yet another person who goes to a
marketplace, but this time the person collects a debt from another without knowing in
advance that the debtor would be in the marketplace as well; thus the market-goer
incidentally collects his debt from another (Phys. 196b30-35). In this case, Aristotle says, the
result-collecting the debt-"though not belonging to the causes in him, is among choices
and things that result from dianoia" (Phys. 197a2). The result of this exchange, then, is said
to have happened tychically, for tyche pertains to human arrangements and situations,
resulting (as we shall see more substantively in the Nicomachean Ethics) from things that
intersect physis and dianoia. When thinking and choice (proairesis) enter the picture, the
horizon of our discourse changes from an inquiry into epistemic certainty to one of peculiar
instances, such that Brentano's suggestion that beings arranging themselves kata symbebekos
from time to time becomes even more powerful: What happens, in physis as in human life,
such that a logos of incidental relationships becomes imperiled, venturing on surrender to that
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which without an account or reason (alogou)? In other words, ifphysis is primarily and most
fundamentally that which happens regularly in it, or in our lives, then a host of phenomena
submerge into muddy water, or break, like honeycombed patterns on fractured thin ice: The
task, then, would be to separate the dirt from the water, or to reform the honeycombs into a
sheet of smooth ice.
Aristotle, however, does no such thing. Given that beings kata symbebekos belong,
ultimately, in a discussion ofphysis as much as, say, a discussion of techne does, Aristotle
responds to tyche by saying, "It is necessary that the aitiai be indefinite from which what
arises from tyche comes about ('Ahorista men oun ta aitia ananke einai, aph' on an genoito
to apo tyches)" (Phys. 197a8-9). In other words, when we think of tyche, we must rethink
how it is that we normally fix aitiai to be definite moments in time such that we can point to
x and say, "that's it! That's what's responsible for such-and-such being the case!" Rather
than locate the genesis of an event at a particular static cause or moment from which
something comes into being, Aristotle here locates the being of an event (at least when
pertaining to thinking and choice) in its appearance as an event. The cause or explanation, in
other words, of collecting a debt lies not in first wanting to go to the marketplace, but in the
event as it happens, and its very happening is kata symbebekos. Thus it is that tyche and that
which happens kata symbebekos belong together: Insofar as many things do happen by
tyche, when these things do happen, it is necessary for the aitiai as explanations to be
indefinite, or without horizon (ahorismos, Phys. 197a9).
That this thought-of tyche pertaining to beings that don't fit into a horizon but that
show themselves nonetheless-is difficult would be a grave understatement, one that
Aristotle knows all too well. Moreover, tyche itself seems to be unbounded and unclear to
human beings (Phys. 197all) to the point where, Aristotle suggests, it is nearly
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understandable that people overlook it (Phys. 197a12), or that, when they do consider it (as
his predecessors have done), they fail to give a full account of its nature. Furthermore,
Aristotle provocatively says, it is right to speak of tyche as paralogou (Phys. 197aI9).
Unlike nous, which is alogou (without the logos), according to Aristotle, tyche stands, we
might say, against the logos in the way that paradoxa challenges endoxa.22 Thus it seems
that we need either abandon tyche altogether (given that what we have is the logos, or the
logos is that to which we aspire), or we need to rethink the role of tyche in a discussion of
physis that bears upon how we find ourselves on and in the pephuke hodos.
Section IV
Chance: A Necessary Logos?
Does a bit of chance come to Aristotle's aid in the Physics? Having discussed
alternative ways to understand normally rigidified words in Aristotle-physis, aitia, ananke,
and logos among them-and having situated Aristotle as primarily a thinker of inquiry, not
certainty, as an examination of these ideas has shown, I turned to the disruptive character of
tyche in Aristotle's Physics with an eye toward how Aristotle's thinking about it bears upon
Socrates' situation in the Phaedo as well as in his own descriptions of his philosophical
practice. Regarding Aristotle specifically, the residual questions I have in mind are as
follows: How does an understanding of tyche in the Physics help us understand its role in the
Nicomachean Ethics in light of its emphasis on thinking and choice, and to what extent
should we take seriously Aristotle's claims in that text that one cannot flourish without tyche?
Is tyche a strange "lost cause" (akin to Lucretius' clinamen), an explanation that mere mortals
22 Not surprisingly, the movement of philosophy, for the Greeks, is the movement from endoxic starting
points to paradoxa, which simultaneously affirms and challenges the horizon of commonly held opinions.
Such is the movement, I think, of speaking about tyche in this portion of the Physics: If we can give no
simple logos of the whole of nature, but can instead speakparalogou, then we see the movement of
philosophy itself as it emerges in-between logos and that which is alogou; the emphasis here, in other
words, is on our status as inquirers on the very horizon that we seek to investigate.
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give when we fail to understand the scheme of the universe? My hope is that, from the
sustained discussions laid out in this chapter concerning the movement of Aristotle's Physics
in the first two books, we can gather together the threads of this discussion in order to speak
meaningfully of the role of tyche in an investigation into nature as it culminates also in an
investigation into ourselves.
If what I have outlined in this chapter holds, then we can make the following
important observations about tyche in the Physics: First, the necessary natural road on which
we find ourselves when making an inquiry into nature depends on how we ourselves engage
in the process of demarcating horizons for such an inquiry, pointing to how it is that we hear
Aristotle's discussion of tyche and automaton as holding open possibilities that his
predecessors overlooked in their accounts of the cosmos. Such a comportment requires an
openness not only to how things appear to us, but also to what's possible for us in such an
inquiry in ways that over-determining Aristotle as primarily and only a scientific thinker
closes off. This openness-to follow physis and philosophical thought where it leads us-
importantly configures the character of our investigation, which is not removed from
Aristotle's concerns in the Physics but instead speaks to the relationship between human
nature and nature itself by highlighting ways in which nature is disclosed through our inquiry
into it. Secondly, the relationship between aitia and logos reinforces the decisiveness of this
character in ways that we might speak meaningfully about explanations, as Socrates does in
the Phaedo. Rather than demarcate aitia from logos, thinking aitia as logos, in at least some
instances, highlights a way in which we needn't stand mutely in front of Aristotle's
formulation of tyche. In my discussion of Aristotle's relationship to his predecessors, thus,
we saw that Aristotle's problem with them is that they fail to wonder at the role of tyche and
automaton in discussions ofp hysis and furthermore, that they relegate tyche to an aitia in a
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traditional physicalist cause of the universe. Certainly, from Aristotle's perspective, such a
consideration is not only to be wondered at, but is strange as well, since we do see many
things happening by tyche, things that depend on an intimate relationship between human
thought and nature, even human thought as it emerges from and within nature. Hence the
importance of Aristotle's seemingly strange discussion of dianoia in the Physics: In what
ways does thinking itself belong to a discussion of nature?
Here we enter the hermeneutic circle yet again: Insofar as we are thinking beings
making an inquiry into nature, implicitly we make an inquiry into our nature as well, which
depends on a prior understanding in or comportment to nature. The failure of purely
physicalist views of the universe overlooks this circle (perhaps understandably), for epistemic
certainty does not require interpretation in the ways that I've laid out here, but Anaxagorean
truth. The importance of Socrates' insistence on the deuleros pIous in the Phaedo as
providing the only meaningfully possible kind of explanation for human life, then, with an
eye toward the best logos providing the best explanation of an event takes center stage:
Mightn't Aristotle himself be making a second sailing, cognizant of the perils of ignoring the
logos altogether while searching for a purely scientific ailia? To my mind, Aristotle warns us
of seductively scientific Sirens through his attention to tyche, underscoring the importance of
the manner in which one speaks or comports oneself in a philosophical investigation in the
first place.
Moreover, in thinking through that which is kala symbebekos and its relationship to
tyche for Aristotle, we have seen how Aristotle's insistence that we begin with how things
appear to us is never simply a matter of an object appearing to a subject; rather, in denoting
one way in which things come to be, that which is kala symbebekos is utterly relational such
that the culmination of this relationality not only indicates the peculiar nature of a given
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thing, but also the infinitely many ways in which we interpret these things. What is (to on),
in other words, is always a belonging together, even of what's strange. Thus, a discussion of
tyche, like techne, belongs in a discussion ofphysis, not removed from it, for tyche belongs to
the ways in which things show themselves.
Furthermore, insofar as we human beings are not simply essences but are also-and
perhaps more significantly-peculiar beings, each of us related to the world, each other, and
ourselves in particular ways, I must emphasize the significance of tyche in the Physics as a
destabilizing force that changes the character of our inquiry by changing the horizon
available to us through which we interpret the whole of everything. Aristotle is right: Tyche
points to that which is peculiar, confronting what we expect to find in an inquiry into nature.
Gathering these thoughts together, then-as a logos should do-I have indicated
what is possible for us in reading Aristotle's Physics, puzzling over tyche in relation to
Socratic philosophical practice must be seen as a matter of inquiry, not of decisive certainty,
and the task before us is as follows: How does our own philosophical comportment today
stand in relation to the Greeks on inquiring into nature? Having shown that Aristotle
encounters many aporiai in his inquiry into nature in the Physics including the relationship
between necessity and nature, aitia and logos, and how this disrupts attempts to read Aristotle
doctrinally, and having puzzled over the role that tyche plays in the same work, we might
suggest that the sustained relationship that Aristotle maintains to tyche is an attempt to give a
logos to something which exceeds the logos in some ways but which nonetheless orients
human beings in the world in the pursuit of the best logos. It is in the difference, one might
say, between modern and Greek philosophy that something that seems so superstitious
today-fortune, chance, luck, happenstance-plays a decisive and central role in Greek
thinking about the world and the human place within it. I submit that Heidegger's
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assessment of a modem prejudice for scientific certainty points out perhaps the impossibility
of reading Aristotle's Physics today with any certainty. Rather, it is in our best interest to
pay attention to where we find ourselves on the natural road such that we can always keep in
mind how things stand in relation to us (e.g., how aitia and ananke, as I have shown, both
precede and elude own inquiry) and how we inquire into our own self-knowledge.
The natural place to tum for continuation into the task of philosophy as it emerges
through fundamental aporiai is to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, for it is in this text that he
strengthens the language of tyche as a phenomenon as it relates specifically to human life
while sustaining nonetheless an inquiry into nature. It is sufficient to say, for now, that if a
bit of tyche comes to our aid, we, too, might be able to inquire into that keystone of Western
philosophy, the Physics, with the hope that the fundamental aporiai presented therein allow
us to rebuke the hubris of Lady Philosophy, permitting us to sit for a while longer with
Socrates, not Boethius, in his prison cell in order to follow in the footsteps of the logoi
preceding us, even if we don't agree to anything now.
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CHAPTER IV
TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO HUMAN NATURE IN ARISTOTLE'S
NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
One can fall well or badly, have a lucky or unlucky break-but always by dint
of not having foreseen--of not having seen in advance and ahead of oneself. [... ]
In such a case, when [a person] or the subject falls, the fall affects his upright stance
and vertical position by engraving in him the detour of the clinamen, whose effects
are sometimes inescapable.
-Derrida (1984,5)
In the previous two chapters, we saw how Aristotle sustains an engagement with
tyche in the Physics by paying attention to how human beings are already situated on the
pephuke hodos in making an inquiry into physis. By considering, as we must always, how
things appear to us in the horizon of an inquiry, we have seen how tyche ultimately emerges
in relation to human thinking and choice for Aristotle while not being simply removed from
nature like an object from a subject. To this end, we have seen how traditional conceptions
of tyche in Aristotelian scholarship miss the mark when figuring the place of tyche in
Aristotle, for no episteme of tyche can be given; such is the source of displeasure for
Aristotelian scholars who insist on epistemic certainty embedded in an over-arching
teleological view of the cosmos. Contrasting these dominant and paradigmatic readings of
Aristotle, then, I have offered attentiveness to the Physics by way of Aristotle's sustained
discussions of tyche and the language of strangeness and wonder appropriate to its emergence
in an inquiry into nature. Further, I have stressed, as I will continue to do in the rest of this
dissertation, the ways in which rethinking traditionally understood terms like logos and
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aitia-and in this chapter, eudaimonia-might help us ground a fruitful discussion of tyche
by disrupting the conceptual frameworks that often over-determine and thus lose sight of the
very topic or phenomenon for consideration in Aristotle's texts. In other words, one cannot
begin to offer a logos of tyche without considering how it appears to us and arrests us in the
very account we try to give of it. Thus, when speaking about that which is kata symbebekos,
for example, one must speak of that which is utterly particular, like Socrates, knowing all the
while that confronting strangeness requires a strange logos indeed.
In turning now to the Nicomachean Ethics, we are immediately faced with several
questions: What is the relationship between Aristotle's Physics and Nicomachean Ethics
such that it makes sense to speak of them together concerning the role oftyche in Aristotle's
thinking? Furthermore, given the preceding chapters on the relationship between aitia and
logos, to what extent can-or should-an understanding of tyche (to the extent that such a
thing is possible) playa role in human flourishing, or in a person's striving to become good?
Too, what kind of "ethics" would a serious consideration of the place of tyche for eudaimonia
look like--or how might one receive such a logos from Aristotle, and what is required of us
as readers to undertake a consideration of tyche in the Ethics? These questions orient and
ground this and the next chapter, and I submit that how one responds to these questions not
only determines the way in which one reads Aristotle's texts but also speaks to one's
character in striving to intenogate what it means to flourish as a human being in the first
place.
For our purposes, we can first note important ways in which the Physics and
Nicomachean Ethics hang together, and thus we can see how the Physics in many ways
provides a formative horizon for considering the task of the Nicomachean Ethics.
Suggesting, as Aristotle does, that the human good is not simply removed from a question of
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physis insofar as an ethical discourse always moves within an inquiry into nature, the first
thing to note is that these two texts are not dichotomously opposed; instead, they resonate
strongly with each other insofar as both take up divergent but consonant inquiries into nature.
While we saw in the Physics that Aristotle's concern is physis writ large, we also saw how it
is that we find ourselves in nature, and thus how human life too is at play in a natural inquiry,
and even emergent from it. Thus in the Physics, an inquiry into nature is in some wayan
inquiry into human nature as well. Since we have seen Aristotle engage his predecessors,
articulate particular phenomena, and call us to be attentive of the character of our inquiry
from the very beginning of the Physics, it is not a stretch to say that how one receives the
logos of physis is an ethical task as much as is receiving a logos about human flourishing.
Thus, by locating ways in which human beings are situated on the pephuke hOdos and by
being attentive to the character of the Physics, we have seen that tyche pertains to that which
appears to us~hence the importance of that which is kata symbebekos as a relational web
from which we strive to articulate that which is particular in nature.
In turning to the Nicomachean Ethics, then, we move specifically to the question of
human nature as characterized by the previous two chapters. It is here that a new horizon
couches our inquiry, however, and we can note the double-importance of such a horizon: If
in the first two chapters I stressed how we find ourselves on the natural road and that how we
engage Aristotle depends on our openness to philosophical phenomena that he encounters
along the way~and thus if the ways in which we attune ourselves to such an inquiry can be
called ethical, or dependent on our character in important ways~thenwe can see how an
inquiry into nature shapes our current concern as well. It is not a matter of an ethical inquiry
determining a natural one, nor is it simply vice-versa; rather, the demands of the Greeks are
such that these inquiries are co-constitutive, ebbing as they flow.
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This newly discovered horizon shapes the relationship between tyche and eudaimonia
in the Nicomachean Ethics. I thus pick up where our inquiry into nature left off, with the
emergence of human life through the appearance of tyche, automaton, and kata symbebekos
in the text. What we have learned from reading Aristotle's Physics about how to proceed
through difficult texts bears upon the character of our inquiry in this text as well, and due
attention will be paid to the ways in which Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics forces us to
confront the horizons-if not the limits-of thought and life themselves.
Our attention now focuses on the possibility of the human good in our lives, doing so
through a sustained engagement with tyche, both as it fixes Aristotle's attention at
determinate points of inquiry but also as it functions importantly as an undercurrent
throughout the discourse of the Ethics as a whole. In fact, Aristotle's inquiry into the human
good in the Ethics sustains several important discussions concerning the role of tyche in
human life and its relationship to eudaimonia, or human flourishing. 23 In the beginning of
23 Two notes on the translation of eudaimonia and tyche: First, eudaimonia more nearly means
"flourishing" than it does "happiness" for the Greeks. I insist on "flourishing" throughout this chapter (in
many ways!) rather than rely on the language of happiness in order to highlight the work-character of
eudaimonia for the Greeks and thus to separate it from a rather impoverished view of "happiness" as
something like a psychological principle that can be satisfied such that a person declares herself "happy."
Furthermore, since the character of eudaimonia is robustly constituted through particular ways of being in
the world, if flourishing is possible, it must be mightily interrogated as to what it is in the first place.
Hence eudaimonia also resonates more strongly, in my view, with Aristotle's task of ethical inquiry than
reaching a psychological state can satisfy.
Second, while the translation of tyche as "chance" dominated the last two chapters, I will speak
comfortably of tyche as chance but also as fortune in the remaining chapters. While the Greek word is the
same, two reasons guide my decision: 1.) In turning specifically to the human good, I will be speaking as
much about the perspective of a particular person regarding her feeling fortunate as I do about things that
happen by chance. I have no problem equivocating between the two, and the language of "fortune" has an
added bonus: It simply lends itself to different parts of speech in English that "chance" does not. (E.g., I
may speak of Socrates as fortunate, and that phrase makes sense. However, if I speak of Socrates as
"chancy," I test the ear and patience of my audience in strange ways.) 2.) The word "fortune" also solicits
the language of a gift as something received, or of a bounty found. Also, we will see Aristotle speak of
those who consider themselves fortunate or not, especially in relation to divine dispensation (theomoirein)
and human flourishing. Thus, when combined with the treatment that tyche gets in the Poetics, referring to
it both as chance and fortune does not seem a stretch to me, for a shape-shifter like tyche plays as least as
many roles.
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the text and throughout the first book in particular, tyche marks an important endoxic starting
point for Aristotle, for many people mistake good fortune (eutychia) for eudaimonia (EN
1099b8), not recognizing that tyche is, in the common way in which it is thought, too
dischordant to complete an account of human flourishing (EN l099b25).
However, Aristotle's account ofthe life and death of Priam in the Ethics offers a
complicated counterpoint to this discussion for Aristotle because those who are said to have
no chance (atychia) or those who suffer terrible misfortunes, as Priam does at the end of his
life, cannot be said to flourish (EN 11 OOa5-9). Aristotle wonders, in thinking of Priam, if
Solon is right: Must we look to the end of a person's life to see whether she can be said to
flourish or not? The result of this aporia-neither good fortune eliding simply with
eudaimonia, nor misfortune abstaining from some kind of role in human flourishing-raises
three imp0l1ant questions for Aristotle in Book I about the role of tyche in eudaimonia, or in
the pursuit of the good: 1) If tyche is not eudaimonia in the way that many think, might
eudaimonia nonetheless, if not result from, then at least heavily consult tyche? 2) In what
ways might tyche enhance eudaimonia over time while also being a destabilizing force in
one's life, regarding external goods in particular, and the possibility ofa blessed life in
general? 3) Since the misfortunes that befall a person have varying degrees of impact, must
we look to the end of a person's life, as Solon demands, in order to consider whether she has
been fortunate or not?
These three questions are paradoxes, i.e., they challenge, go against, and deepen
endoxic beginnings. More precisely for the beginning of this chapter, they offer responses to
the endoxic starting point of whether tyche can be considered eudaimonia or not. These
paradoxes are not, strictly speaking, resolved; rather, they guide the trajectory of the Ethics as
Aristotle's own inquiry deepens to concern arete (excellence), human "agency," courage,
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death, friendship, and the possibility of eudaimonia at all or in the first place. For the
Greeks, paradoxes don't simply overturn dominant commonly held opinions prevailing in
their time; rather, in challenging these opinions, we can also see the importance ofthese
opinions. And yet, the movement of philosophy, one could say, is the movement of
paradoxa itself, as it certainly was for the Greeks. Such a movement never abandons
"opinion" as such but may be, as Russell Winslow poetically notes, "the disposition ofa
citizen becoming a foreigner to her own city" (2007, 112). In many ways, this statement
resounds with how one can read the Ethics today: Aristotle's ethical text is well-known to
nearly every philosopher and scholar, and yet it remains strange to us, reminding us of the
difficulties one encounters when thinking about flourishing or becoming good. The
movement ofparadoxa thus demands not only that we begin with commonly held opinions
such that we can abandon them for worthier pursuits but also requires making new
beginnings or engaging in philosophical thought when it confronts us, for different kinds of
questions require different kinds of inquiries, even if they concern the same thing.
Thus, as we saw with Aristotle's Physics, sensitivity to the way in which the text
proceeds is paramount to understanding. Or, to put it as Heidegger does, "[t]he one speaking
always speaks to something in a certain respect" and never straightforwardly (2005, 31).
This sentiment holds as true for the Nicomachean Ethics as it does for the Physics:
Especially when confronting the obscurity of tyche, we must be cautious not only in what we
say about it, but also in how we receive Aristotle's logoi throughout the text. Yet, the nature
of tyche is such that one is always at risk in speaking of it, particularly as a phenomenon. But
what kind of risk might one run when considering the weight of tyche in its relationship to
eudaimonia? As Heidegger notes, the logos contains within it the possibility of deception,
both of ourselves and of the world, but such deception is not innocuous; rather, "[t]his
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speaking with its possibilities ofdeception stands as such in a world which presents
possibilities ofdeception on its own" (2005, 29). The world, according to Heidegger, is
capable of deception in two ways: First, it presents itself to us in respective settings that
leave open many possible ways of interpreting the world; second, the world itself is elusive,
obscured, and dark. As such, "an abundant interweaving ofpossibilities ofdeception
becomes evident as a possibility ofbeing, interwoven with the existence ofspeaking and the
existence ofthe world' (2005, 30). I call upon these Heideggerian passages here in order to
highlight the possibilities that arise for us as we risk ourselves in reading Aristotle's Ethics,
which forces us to engage not only Aristotle's world, but to interrogate our own.24
In light of these remarks, one might say that tyche ultimately plays at least two roles
in the Ethics: First, it formulates Aristotle's inquiry into the possibility of eudaimonia and
the good in human life, laying out the roles of external goods in one's life and moving
through paradoxical thoughts about tyche in order to examine closely how external goods
affect what we normally consider as "agency." These thoughts align with the paradoxes laid
out about and move Aristotle's inquiry deeper to the locus of ethical action. Second, tyche
functions primarily as a phenomenon in human life, insofar as it speaks to how we
experience, or might experience, our lives as we live them in friendship with others and
ourselves. As we shall see, tyche, as a liminal yet urgent concern for human life, even speaks
to the necessity of courage in friendship, and what it might mean to love one's life. This
second role proves a dramatic shift in Aristotle's text and as his words accelerate toward
concluding thoughts about friendship and the promise of yet another beginning (into politics,
24 I retum to this Heideggerian impetus in the final chapter when I speak explicitly not only to tragedy for
Aristotle as it emerges in his Poetics, but also in poiesis as a whole including art and poetry. In that chapter
I recall what I layout here but in the language of "earth" and "world" as they are configured in Heidegger's
"Origin of the Work of Art" in relationship to the Poetics.
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he says, but back to physis, I say), we, too, will require a different exegesis, one that strikes at
the very heart of the possibility of the human good. The apex of this dramatic shift arises in
the next chapter, when we consider the relationship between eutychia ("good fortune") and
euphuein ("good nature") in light of the kairos (circumstance) of Socratic courage and the
life of philosophy.
One must keep in mind the demands placed on the reader when engaging Aristotle,
sensitive to the ways in which one is confronted with the whole of everything at every tum in
Greek thought, as I said in the introduction. Yet, insofar as one undergoes a logos as much as
one tries to give it, as I have already begun to articulate in this chapter, I continue to follow
Aristotle's own thinking on the matter in a way that allows us to confront the appearance of
tyche as it emerges for Aristotle with particular attention to my sketch in the last paragraph
regarding two different ways of considering tyche in this text. Thus, in order to speak of
ethical action and the possibility of a flourishing life particularly as it is bound to the task of
the logos, courage, and friendship, in this chapter I consider the following:
1. The emergence of tyche as eudaimonia in Aristotle's endoxic beginning;
2. The necessity of "external goods" (fa ekta) for eudaimonia;
3. Theos, makarios, and the language of the gift;
4. Solon and looking to the end of human life;
5. Tyche, stability, and the perils of forgetfulness.
Following Aristotle as he encounters tyche in this text reveals not only another perhaps
surprisingly sustained engagement with it as we saw with the Physics, but also prepares us to
gather together more thematic elements of the text in the next chapter.
One final note on my method of proceeding through these two chapters: At the
beginning of my first chapter, I outlined contemporary and traditional discussions on the
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Physics before, or as a way of, engaging the text itself. Doing so was necessary for framing
the emergence of tyche in a consideration ofphysis insofar as tyche remains largely
overlooked in Aristotelian scholarship, particularly in the Physics. However, in these two
chapters I mainly consult scholars along the way rather than up front given that, simply put,
the scope Nicomachean Ethics is in many ways obvious: It concerns the possibility of human
flourishing, and the ways in which a person can become good. Nimbly navigating, however,
how these aims touch base with and speak to tyche is my task; thus, engaging scholars mainly
along the way enables me to point to differences in my understanding of Aristotle's inquiry
given that the very ways in which Aristotle's aims are obvious also point to a fundamental
obscurity regarding the radical contingency of a flourishing life.
Section I
An Endoxic Beginning? Tyche as Eudaimonia
One might be tempted to read the whole of the Nicomachean Ethics as an attempt to
grapple with the role of tyche in human life, and one would not be completely off-base in
doing so. As Christopher Long notes, in the Ethics, "Aristotle turns his full attention and
philosophical acumen to contingent existence and develops a conception of knowledge
capable of doing justice to the vagaries of such contingency" (2004, 131). According to
Long, phronesis ("practical wisdom") is a special kind ofpraxis, but moreover designates
"an ontological significance" that emerges in Aristotle's thinking itself and continues to
persist in the form of a question: "[T]o what extent is ontological knowledge of the finite
individual possible?" (2004, 132) The task of the Ethics, in seeking to respond to this
question, concerns the relationship between universality and singularity, and ultimately, the
finite individual over and against an abstract universal. Whereas episteme (and also sophia)
concerns that which can't be otherwise, phronesis pertains to contingency, i.e., that which
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can be otherwise, and so belongs to an ethical discourse about human nature, given that we
make manifold and various decisions according to what we consider good for us.
Accordingly, for Long, the Ethics grapples less in reference to that which is kathalau, or
pertaining to the whole, than it does with particularity and a person's striving to flourish, and
thus aims to recognize the contingency of our actions and decisions in trying to flourish.
Such a thought aligns with the beginning of the Ethics in which we learn that, while all things
aim at some good, this good is at least said in many ways (as "being" [ta an] is also said to be
in many ways in the Physics), and thus a manifold sense of the good (tau agathau) is at play
in Aristotle's ethical discourses, for this manifold sense pertains to human life.
Because Aristotle grapples with particularity on such a fine level, Long's ultimate
conclusion is thus that the tade ti (the "what is")-insofar as it designates a particular,
concrete individual-links ethics to ontology in Aristotle, especially in light ofphranesis,
which, as phranimas (a person with practical wisdom) designates a concrete individual
engaged in ethical considerations, intertwined and inseparable. "[O]ntology becomes ethical
the moment it recognizes its own contingency," according to Long, because "the ethics of
ontology turns away from the quest for certainty, toward the ambiguity of individuality,
seeking to do justice to that which cannot be captured by the concept" (2004, 154). Since our
experience is always of the concrete individual as ourselves individuals, this experience is
not, precisely speaking, universalizable; such an attempt at universalization will result in an
empty conceptual schema, akin to how we witnessed the failure of episteme to speak to that
which is particular in nature, i.e., things that appear kata symbebekas or by tyche. Because
we are praxical beings, then, according to Long, we are simultaneously ethical and
ontological, with no priority discernable between the two ways in which we experience our
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world?5 Again emphasizing the relatedness between the Physics and the Ethics, we can see
how particularity emerges in the Physics pertaining to human choice and thinking; the Ethics
is a further attempt to grapple with the particularities and contingencies of human life.
To this end and likewise, Claudia Baracchi considers the shortcomings of episteme in
light of the particularity of human existence most demonstrated in the Ethics. Claiming that
first philosophy for Aristotle is ethics, she says, "First in the order of being, ethics is, indeed,
last in the order of knowledge, most encompassing-for it entails humans' self-reflexivity
about their own endeavors, their coming back full circle to reflect on their own undertakings,
most remarkably on their own reflective exercises (e.g., scientific investigation ofphysis and
'beyond,' logical or rhetorical analyses, the study of the sou!...)" (2003, 229). According to
Baracchi, phronesis for Aristotle is both practical and active in striving toward some end but
is also contemplative or "theoretical," able to think about what is good both for the person
with phronesis and also for others. In this way, phronesis sits aside sophia, and we can see
this relationship when we consider that understanding sophia and its role in eudaimonia
points to a daimonic movement of humans beyond themselves in a place in which they (we)
belong (Baracchi 2003, 239). This strange sort of knowledge is a self-interrogation outside
ourselves but in our place of flourishing, since sophia, or wisdom-which may be impossible
for human beings-also links closely with eudaimonia for Aristotle.
25 Long's discussion on the relationship between ethics and ontology is tempting, and I employ these
passages here in order to demonstrate ways in which scholarship tries to think the individual in Aristotle's
thought. His emphasis on contingency in the EN speaks to the fundamental concern I'm trying to address
here, which is none other than the radical contingency of human flourishing and life. However, it seems
that the word "relative" could very well be substituted for the word "contingent" in the passages above as
well as throughout his discussion, for though he strongly insists upon it as an important word, he seems
instead to be saying that arete is relative to a particular individual in a particular time; thus, it seems like
the necessary force of contingency breaks down and gives over to a relative stance that affirms the radical
particularity of the individual, but not as a necessary contingency. Thus for Long, epistemic questions
become ethical ones, but relativity, not contingency, seems to be Long's main concern (cf. Long 2004, pp.
57,65,114-116,120,128).
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This gesture to the "beyond-human" (Baracchi 2003, 242) in Aristotle, according to
Baracchi, notes the possibility for thinking both of gods and (other?) animals, and thus raises
the question and attempts to respond to what, precisely, composes a human being. Phronesis,
on her reading, is not necessarily exclusively human, and "this rapprochement of divinity and
animality enonnously complicates the relation of humans to the other living beings as well as
the connections between the divine and life" (2003, 242). Thus there may be a way of going
or gesturing "beyond," both ethically and as it relates to eudaimonia, though not in a
totalizing, epistemic way.
I point to both Long and Baracchi to consider how we might speak philosophically
about a particular person's striving for eudaimonia and the task of the Ethics as it concerns
offering and receiving logoi about the radical contingency of human life, with particular
attention paid to how this life gestures beyond itself when speaking of eudaimonia. In laying
the stakes of such a discussion, we can anticipate how eudaimonia is simply much more, or at
least other, than we might nonnally take it to be. And its importance and possibility, I
submit, is closely tied to tyche.
Let us consider how this is so. After noting in the Ethics, as Aristotle does in the
Physics, that we must begin our inquiry into the human good from what is known to us (EN
1095b 1-5), Aristotle lays out three candidates for eudaimonia and the good life: pleasure
(hedone), honor (tim a) through the political life, and contemplation (theoria). The first,
pleasure, is what "most people" hold to be the good (EN 1095b14), but this life is completely
slavish, differing not from the life of fatted cattle. The second contender, honor, results from
political pursuits, and is pursued by people "in order to be convinced that they themselves are
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good" (EN 1095b27-28) while the people pursuing these ends may not be "good" at al1. 26
This kind of life is, however, more praiseworthy than a life of pleasure because it at least
solicits excellence (arete, EN 1095b30-32). (The third, a contemplative life, is excused from
Aristotle's overt endoxic starting points concerning what most people hold to be
eudaimonia.)
On the heels of considering a political life as what's good for human beings, Aristotle
says that even if a political life that pursues honor also in some way solicits arete, this life is
still incomplete. The reason for which such a life remains unfulfilled, however, is not
because it requires bending to the whims of others in pursuing one's goals, nor because honor
is a "bad" end to pursue; rather, Aristotle says, this kind of life
seems too incomplete, since it seems possible, while having [exonta] arete, even to
be asleep or to be inactive throughout life, and on top of these things, to suffer evils
[megista] and the greatest misfortunes [or, to be without tyche, atychein]. No one
would consider one who lived in that way to flourish [eudaimonisefen] [... ]. (EN
1095b33-1 096a2)
In other words, for Aristotle, the task of flourishing does not simply concern "having" virtues
or excellence, because a person can be inactive throughout life, and such inactivity denotes a
failure to live, let alone to flourish; eudaimonia concerns a certain active attunement to and in
the world, and this active attunement demands a receptivity of the world (i.e., one can't
simply be asleep through life and flourish). Furthermore, should a person be without tyche or
suffer terribly, eudaimonia, Aristotle suggests, is unlikely. Two important points surface
here concerning what people usually consider eudaimonia to be, and they provoke Aristotle's
subsequent considerations of tyche: 1) A person with arete may not be immune to tyche, and
so those who pursue honor as the greatest good, for example, could find their lives maligned
26 Spinoza echoes this sentiment in his Treatise on the Emendation ofthe Intellect about those who pursue
honor, saying also that these people must direct their lives according to other people's rules and desires
(Spinoza 1994, 3-6).
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by misfortune, or by not having tyche, and 2) Eudaimonia also is not immune from tyche,
and maybe even requires it. So, even if one "has" arete (if it is even possible in the first
place to possess excellence as such, which, as we shall see, is debatable), then contingent or
external factors can impact one's life in such a way that her life might not be considered to
flourish, or might provide reasons for which we might not consider an atychic person to
flourish.
However, the ways in which I just described possibilities for discerning how Aristotle
lays the stakes for the relationship between tyche and eudaimonia in the previous paragraph
masks a deeply aporetic moment for philosophical consideration, which is that eudaimonia as
flourishing may not be up to us in the way that pursuing politics or a life of pleasure is. In
consulting tyche, which as we learned in the previous two chapters pertains to human
thinking and choice, appearing to us as we appear to ourselves in our inquiries and lives,
Aristotle opens a reconsideration eudaimonia in this longer passage, and we are called to
investigate it: What, really, is a flourishing life in such a way that tyche either threatens or
determines it? A quick gloss on the etymology of eudaimonia will demonstrate the ways in
which tyche must belong to eudaimonia, at least in celtain respects.
According to Sir David Ross, the corresponding adjective to eudaimonia "originally
meant 'watched over by a good genius,' but in ordinary Greek usage the word means just
good fortune, often with special reference to external prosperity" (1995, 198).27 Ross notes
also, as I have (pg. 98n23), that "[t]he conventional translation 'happiness' is unsuitable in
the Ethics; for whereas 'happiness' means a state of feeling, differing from 'pleasure' only by
its suggestion of permanence, depth, and serenity, Aristotle insists that eudaimonia is a kind
27 Ross's translation of daimon (from daimonia) as "genius" is inadequate, but his point that the word calls
one beyond oneself in ways consistent with Aristotle's thinking about eudaimonia is well taken.
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of activity; that it is not any kind of pleasure, though pleasure naturally accompanies it"
(1995, 198). Embedded in these characterizations lie three important ways to reconsider
eudaimonia, all of which are highly suggestive: First, if we take eudaimonia, insofar as it's
related to a person being attended by a "good genius," seriously, then we need to discuss
ways in which eudaimonia might significantly pertain to flourishing in a way that doesn't
simply belong to us as a state or habit might; rather, the language of being "watched over"
solicits our belonging not always to ourselves insofar as we are capable of being watched
over, or as we belong not only to ourselves. Second, Ross notes that in ordinary Greek usage
the word eudaimonia simply meant good fortune, and we should dwell with this suggestion,
as we shall see Aristotle do in saying that eudaimonia seems to be nothing other than good
fortune. Third, Ross is right in saying that eudaimonia is not a kind of pleasure, but is
pleasurable, and is most of all an activity. The question is, though, what kind of "activity"
(I'm understanding ergon here, so activity as "work" or "deed," and also activity as it
concerns energeia, which will be for Aristotle the work of psyche) can eudaimonia be if we
understand it to pertain to the first two points outlined above? Gathering this tripartite
thinking together, eudaimonia seems to be excessive to our desire for it, and might very well
hinge on something other than our "will" or virtue-generating habits.
Suggesting that eudaimonia pertains to the excess of human life might seem
anathema to the Greeks from our modern perspective, but let us return briefly to Socrates at
the end of the Greater Hippias, discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation in order to
see what kind of language might pertain to a flourishing life in relation to tyche. In that
chapter I noted how Socrates' account of his own philosophical practice, in contrast to that of
Hippias, is bound to a daimonia tis tyche (Gr. Hip. 304C), a result of which, Socrates says,
leads him to wander around and exhibit his aporiai to others. Whereas I initially linked
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Socrates' mention of tyche to the role of aporiai in Aristotle as well as in Socrates' own
philosophical practice as characterized by him, I now emphasize the word daimonia as the
suggestive root of eu-daimonia for Aristotle in the way that Socrates characterizes it here.
Thus, Socrates says that his philosophical practice results in him demonstrating his aporiai to
others-such is the character of Socratic elenchus, and such is the way in which
conversations with Socrates happen through encountering and taking up impasses in
philosophicallogoi. That Socrates locates the genesis or articulates the happening of his
philosophical practice as bound to a daimonia tis tyche, however, is quite significant, for the
logos Socrates offers here demonstrates the ways in which Socrates-and quite possibly
philosophy itself-doesn't simply "belong" to Socrates as something that he necessarily
"does" while fully in control of himself; rather, this sense of daimonia resonates beautifully
with Ross's suggestion that we consider the etymology of the word eudaimonia, as it may
resonate also with Baracchi's gesture to the "beyond-human": We may not, ultimately, fully
possess ourselves in flourishing, but might inevitably been bound to others-even the
watchful eye of a good genius-when considering what it truly means to flourish. We may,
moreover, be given over to ourselves in this reflexive and overabundant movement. In this
recognition of the excessive nature of ourselves as belonging not only to ourselves in a
determined way, eudaimonia resonate with what it might mean to be truly fortunate, and to
be so in a way that exceeds our epistemic knowledge of it, calling us back to tyche and
ourselves.
We will continue to see how these complicated ideas cash out in rethinking the force
and place of eudaimonia in human life. For now, I simply bring to our attention the
relationship between eudaimonia and tyche as it begins to take shape for Aristotle, as it does
for Socrates. Since, according to Aristotle, eudaimonia is best, most beautiful, and most
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pleasant (ariston ara kai kalliston kai ediston he eudaimonia, EN 1099a25), and since all of
these things are present in a life at work (EN l099a30), a person needs to be equipped to
undertake such a life in order to flourish. What it means to be equipped for such a life,
however, requires tyche in another respect, for "it is impossible, or not easy, to engage in
beautiful actions if one is not equipped for them" (EN l099a34-35). Having laid out in this
section, then, the ways that tyche might resonate with eudaimonia insofar as Aristotle says
that a person cannot be said to flourish without tyche, as I noted a few pages ago, let us tum
our attention to what it means to be equipped for a flourishing life concerning tyche and
external goods.
Section II
Tvche and "External Goods"
What does it mean to be equipped for eudaimonia, or the possibility of it being-at-
work in one's life? And how, given what I noted at the end of the last section, can a person
prepare herself for the possibility of a flourishing life, if what it means to flourish might not
depend solely on this person? If my suggestion in the last section holds, i.e., that eudaimonia
resonates with tyche not only etymologically but also insofar as Aristotle says simply that one
cannot flourish without tyche, then it seems that we have stumbled onto a tautology: To what
extent can external goods (ta ekta), if they signify the fortunes that befall a person in her life,
prepare oneself truly for being fortunate, or eutychia? Can one really say that flourishing
depends on tyche in a certain way, if that flourishing itselfis a matter oftyche? I submit that
not only is this suggestion possible, but it is also necessary for Aristotle, given the manifold
accounts of tyche that we receive from him in the Ethics. What we shall see in this section is
that Aristotle faults those who simply conflate eudaimonia and eutychia, but not for the
reasons we may think: For those who hold that these two words are the same, the ways in
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which people assert them to be so has more to do with a fundamental misunderstanding of
human nature than it does with the nature of tyche, for these people fail to understand what
kind of life entails a consideration of chance. While the impact of Aristotle's discussion of
external goods will be seen more clearly in the next section when we tum to the life of Priam
and Solon's reminder, working carefully through the necessity of external goods for
eudaimonia underscores the importance of tyche for a flourishing life.
Aristotle says, "it appears that there is an additional need [prosdeomai] of external
goods [ta ekta], as we said, since it is impossible, or not easy, to engage in beautiful actions if
one is not equipped for them" (EN 1099a33-35).28 This passage occurs just after the one last
discussed in the previous section, where we saw Aristotle characterize eudaimonia as that
which is best, most beautiful, and most pleasant. In our discussion we saw that eudaimonia
may very well gesture beyond a solitary individual in ways that give a person back to herself
in flourishing under the watchful eye of a daimon. Thus, what is best, most beautiful, and
most pleasant seems to belong to more than an isolated individual, echoing the way in which
we understand what's best or pleasant in virtue of another, in its coming to us as pleasant or
beautiful. But how is it that, in speaking of an excessive human nature, Aristotle can speak to
ways in which we take up and engage the world in a meaningful way? Since the trajectory of
the Ethics engages how a person might flourish or engage in beautiful actions, Aristotle tums
his attention to what makes such flourishing possible, or at least helps it along. And what
helps it along is, in a certain sense, things that come by tyche as "extemal goods."
The word for "additional need," prosdeomai, is pivotal in this passage, for it hearkens
to the poverty in which a person might find herself if bereft of ta ekta (if such a thing is
28 epa [VH£H 8' DIlWC; KaL n;)v k,ac; tiya8wv TIpoa8EOIlEvll, Ka8aTIEp E'lTIOIJ.EV· ti8Uvawv yap ~ ou pq8Lov 1"a
KaAa TIpanELV tixoP~Yll1"OV DV1"a (EN l099a33-35).
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possible). While one might be tempted to contrast the necessity of external goods to more
dominant "internal" goods, like arete or phronesis, doing so would erect a false opposition
between the solitude of an individual and what she encounters in the world or in particular
circumstances. For Aristotle, such a contrast is unhelpful, for a human being cannot flourish
as a hermit (EN 1097b9-11), but requires friends, citizens, and others. In disparaging the life
of a hermit in this earlier part the Ethics, Aristotle speaks clearly to the highest good,
eudaimonia, being self-sufficient (autarcheis), most choiceworthy, and complete (EN
1097b1-21). This self-sufficiency is importantly not what suffices for oneself alone (EN
1097b9), but rather comes to be so through the connections and relationships in which one
finds oneself. Thus the significance ofprosdeomai: the verb means "to require besides,"
"stand in need of," and "be in want of," much like the basic requirements of a human life to
demand the presence of others for Aristotle. But what does it mean to stand in need?
In the Republic, Socrates tells Adeimantus and Glaucon that "[e]ach of us is not self-
sufficient, but in need of much" (Rep. 369b4-c). Occurring at a pivotal moment in the
dialogue, these words mark a change from considering justice in an individual soul to seeing
how it comes about (gignetai) in a city through an account (logos, Rep. 369a3-5) of it. To
this end, Socrates says that considering the ways in which each person is in need of much
requires also a consideration of which kind of city is best-suited to respond to these needs,
speaking to a fundamental human disposition as requiring others (or a city). Perhaps echoing
Aristotle's statements that the life of a hermit is no life at all and moreover that, as I've noted,
a true sense of self-sufficiency according to Aristotle requires more than what suffices for
oneself alone (and thus demands, e.g., friendship and a city), the character of human life that
emerges not only for Aristotle but also in the life of Socrates demands that self-sufficiency
requires something other than our sheer will or desire to flourish; in many ways, it comes
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from another. Thus, when Aristotle says that it is impossible, or not easy (adynaton) to act
beautifully if a person is not equipped for doing so, we can take him to be speaking to basic
requirements for a flourishing life, if such a thing is possible for us. Extemal goods, ta ekta,
are thus neceSSaIy for such a life, if there's to be any possibility of eudaimonia at all. Ta ekta
simply means "outside," or "that which stands outside," and perhaps we can rewrite the
passage as follows: In order to live a self-sufficient and choiceworthy life, and in order to
work toward eudaimonia, which itself is a kind of excessive being-at-work, we must
recognize the ways we are impoverished or ill-equipped to do so on our own; a life in
solitude cannot be said to flourish. Extemal goods, then, seem to make all the difference
regarding what kind of life is possible for a person, for Socrates is right: Each of us is not
self-sufficient, but in need of much.
These things said, Aristotle's list of what's included in ta ekta is decidedly strange,
ranging from wealth and good looks to corrupt children and dead friends, all of which either
help or hinder a person's capacity for eudaimonia. He says,
[M]any things are done, as ifby instruments (organon), by means of friends and
wealth and political power. And those who lack certain things, such as good
ancestry, good children, and good looks, disfigure their flourishing (eudaimonikos);
for someone who is completely ugly in appearance, or of bad descent, or solitary and
childless is not very apt to flourish, and is still less so perhaps if he were to have
utterly corrupt children or friends, or good ones who had died. So as we said, there
seems to be an additional need (prosdeisthai) of this sort of prosperity, which is why
some people rank eutychia on the same level as eudaimonia [... J. (EN I099bl-9)
While this passage brings consternation to contemporary virtue ethicists who point to an
imbedded elitism emergent in Aristotle's thought,29 Aristotle's concern here is to emphasize
29 See, e.g., The Fragility ofGoodness (Nussbaum 200 I), The Unnatural Lottery (Card 1996), and
implications of these interpretations for contemporary ethical thought in "Moral Luck" (Nagel 1979).
Representative of much contemporary discourse concerning Aristotle's "ethics" and Aristotelian elitism,
Nussbaum says, "[t]he first and most striking defect is the absence, in Aristotle, of any sense of universal
human dignity, a fortiori of the idea that the worth and dignity of human beings is equal" (200 I, xx). The
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the ways in which human life is already caught up and bound to its emergence in the world,
standing one way or another in relation to all these things. To this end, what interests
Aristotle are the ways in which ta ekta contributes to a flourishing life, not what might make
such a life impossible. That Aristotle ends the Ethics with three books on friendship, for
example, gestures to the significance of it in becoming good, but noteworthy to this end is
that one does not just "have" friends, or good children, or wealth, as one might simply have
dishes in one's kitchen; rather, each of the goods listed here-insofar as they potentially
contribute to eudaimon ia-requires something on behalf of the person's relationship to these
goods, an attunement or receptivity to acknowledging these goods as good. As we saw
Aristotle say about those who simply "have" arete, for example, a mere having is insufficient
for being excellent or for creatively interpreting the world; one can sleep through life while
"having" arete, and thus fail to have it at all.
The same thinking applies here. A person cannot have friends like she has dishes;
rather, what it means to be a friend and to have friends requires action with the friend such
that friendship emerges between two people. It is a fundamentally creative act, striking at the
difference between acquisition and action, and for Aristotle, the emphasis in the Ethics is on
action. Because this is so, we see that he concludes this list by saying that some people
mistakenly rank eutychia, good fortune, on the same level as eudaimonia, but I submit that
Aristotle finds these people mistaken because they think that tyche is simply a matter of
being lucky enough to have external goods come to them, failing to realize that a mere
consequences of such a position, according to Nussbaum, is that Aristotle, in lacking a modem political
viewpoint, relegated to necessity or chance things that human beings should work harder to change: "the
suffering was perhaps not necessary, and [... ] if we had worked harder or thought better we might have
prevented [the tragedy in question]. At the very least it means that we had better get ourselves together to
do whatever we can to avoid such things in the future" (2001, xxxv). The goal, for Nussbaum, is to protect
a rational view ofthe self over and against whatever happens to it; passages like this one from Aristotle
trouble Nussbaum on account of their tendency to destabilize an insular sense of self characterized by
rationality alone.
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"having" is insufficient for eudaimonia, and thus is also insufficient for truly understanding
eutychia, or even tyche as the radical contingency of human life.
About the status of ta ekta and the relationship between tyche and eudaimonia,
Steven White says that Aristotle points to a "genuine and serious worry" about the
relationship between tyche and eudaimonia in these passages, for "[i]f the major ends of
human life are heavily subject to fortune, then a good life also depends heavily on fortune; if
our major ends result only 'coincidentally' from our actions, then deliberate action itself
seems pointless from the perspective of human life" (1992, 87). The question, according to
White, is "how important" things that come by tyche are for human flourishing, with the task
being how to understand in what ways "the most important ends" of human life and action
are subject to fortune (1992, 87). In his reading of this passage, White says that bodily goods
(health and strength) and external goods (wealth and power) are subject to things beyond a
person's control, but that these things matter little to the self-sufficiency of a person's soul:
"Even if the virtuous cannot be happy without some favor from fortune, it does not follow
that they need much favor or that anyone could be happy by its favor alone" (1992, 83).
Thus, prosperity is neither primary nor sufficient for arete or eudaimonia because the rational
activity of a person acting deliberately insulates the power of the soul by downplaying the
effects of external goods, regardless of how much or little they might impact our lives.
But, by diminishing the force of ta ekta-and subsequently, tyche-for Aristotle,
White isolates the soul, itself by itself, from how it is already bound in and to the world. In
pinpointing ways in which arete belongs to the soul and not to things beyond one's control or
in relation to these things, we must conclude that the resulting picture of human life is like a
warrior with a shield, whose goal is to fend off the world and protect himself from it, not
recognizing that he too stands in need of the world in ways that don't depend on him. Yet,
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White is right to point out precisely why tyche puzzles not only many people who confuse it
for flourishing, but also Aristotle as well. I submit, however, that people who inappropriately
conflate eutychia with eudaimonia (both in Aristotle's text and in contemporary thought) do
so because they overlook ways in which a person must interpret her world in light of what
comes to her, and always in response to these things.
Looming in the background of this discussion is resentment, or the ways in which a
person finds her life impoverished in light of others' lives. Along with the worries of
contemporary virtue ethicists (see pg. 114n29), we might rearticulate the issue in yet another
way concerning the equity and inequity of the world, and how it is that we see others prosper
in ways that we don't. Again, the fundamental error in thinking of one's life as a matter of
tyche lies in thinking that tyche is simply removed from the life of the person it affects and
her interpretation of the world. More precisely, as we saw in the Physics, tyche emerges
through ways in which we already find ourselves in nature, and thus what happens to us is
what speaks to the nature of human life and becomes our task for taking ourselves up.
In her excellent article on the role of nemesis in the Ethics, Ronna Burger writes that
"[t]o cling ... to the 'beautiful speeches' of morality [in the Ethics], when they are in conflict
with the 'hard knocks' oflife, is precisely the condition for the experience of righteous
indignation" (1988, 128). Nemesis takes pity as its proper contrary, and both are moralistic:
indignation "translates good fortune into reward, just as pity translates bad fortune into
punishment" (1988, 129). The distress for each arises "from the consequent discrepancy
between this perceived external reward or punishment and an assumption about the internal
character of the one who undergoes it" (1988, 129). In other words, one feels righteous
indignation when one's surly neighbor at least seems to have good things befall him.
Pointing to the apparently undeserved good fortune of others, Burger emphasizes the force of
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appearance, i.e., that this neighbor only seems to have good things befall him. Congruent
with our discussion to this point, however, Burger suggests that "perhaps the application of
the measure of virtue and vice to external fortune and misfortune is altogether conceived and
the latter have nothing whatever, or very little, to do with dessert [what one ought to get]"
(1988, 129). Good or bad fortune, then, cannot just be matched to "inner worth," for in
receiving what one "deserves," then chance itself would be eradicated in favor of necessity
only.
Righteous indignation shows itself as the desire for a natural order of justice that
would match character to chance, with a person receiving what she "ought" to have. Though
we may want nature to punish the bad and reward the good, our desire demands that we
convert this wish into law and satisfy ourselves through it to try to make sure that one's inner
character proportionately receives what it has earned or deserved. Yet surely such a thing is
impossible, and thus the notion of equity as "the realization of the impossibility of the law's
fulfilling a certain standard of precision" because its impossible universality "makes
forgiveness possible" (1988, 132). Forgiveness thus depends on the recognition of the role of
chance, and "pity, like indignation, on the denial of it" (1988, 132). Burger suggests that this
might be a way to rethink pathos as the incommensurability of what one deserves versus
what one gets, in light of our tendency to pity someone instead. Forgiveness, then, in the
way that it recognizes tyche, should replace pity, for pity suggests that life "always rewards
the good" (1988, 132). On this view, one pities another because good things don't happen
for this person when one thinks that they ought to.
Burger raises the question of the equitable person and wonders if he is as
invulnerable to indignation as he is said to be to shame, arguing that the equitable person
"thus reveals negatively, but his distance from it, the fundamental presuppositions of
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nemesis-on the one hand, that human beings are fully responsible for their character and
actions, on the other, that good and bad fortune can be meted out proportionate to dessert"
(1988,133). Nemesis, as the "hidden root" (1988,133) of all ethical virtues, according to
Burger, thus ultimately points to the ghostly presence of the gods in the Ethics as it forms the
"silent horizon for the account of ethical virtue as a whole" (1988, 133). With these
comments, we come close to soliciting the question of divine dispensation, theomoirein, in
the Greeks, which anchors the next passage I will turn to from Aristotle. According to
Burger, though, "the gods become a double cause of resentment; for even if we could
attribute punishment to them, they seem too personal and willful to satisfy what nemesis
really desires-some objective force of justice, operating like a law of nature, in which effect
follows automatically and intrinsically from cause" (1988, 132).
Absent such a possibility, however (i.e., the knowledge of a cause that operates
appropriately to human beings in a way that would align human life with the motion of the
planets, satisfying some objective cause of ethical action), as we have seen in Aristotle's
inquiry into nature in the Physics, the place of tyche diminishes for those who don't
recognize it as it stands against sheer necessity in nature. Burger echoes this sentiment,
saying, "To disclose the illusion involved in the denial of chance is, therefore, one reasonable
aim of ethical inquiry; of course that alone, even if achieved, would not guarantee either the
possibility or the desirability of being weaned from the experience of indignation when
character and fortune fail to coincide" (1988, 136). In light of the incommensurability
between what a person thinks she deserves and what she receives, then, and regarding the
impossibility of delimiting a cause for a person's flourishing, Burger implores us to take up
the Aristotelian logos as a deed, in order to test life itself.
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For Burger, the gods disappear in human life, for they can neither receive human
indignation in light of a basic sense of unfairness or true human desire; they cannot receive
appeals from suffering human beings, because the gods are forever removed in a certain
sense from human life. Thus, an attempt to appeal to the gods to assuage one's fears, correct
injustices, and ask for a correct measure that aligns one's goods with one's character falls on
deaf ears; the gods remain immune to human pleas. While this account may be true, what's
missing from it is not what the gods themselves are, such that they become our target of
anger and frustration, but the other half of the story: how it is that we receive what is given
to us as a gift, or even as the basic happening of human life. Aristotle is keen on this point,
as we shall next see, for in resonating with the ways I've laid out eudaimonia in the previous
section and in light of ta ekta in human life, tyche also resounds with the language of the
gods. Taken together, these words strike a chord in speaking profoundly about the excesses
of human life, speaking to the ways in which human beings as given back over to
themselves-even in striving for arete-and thus dynamically reinforce the necessity of a
creative receptivity from a person to her life and the world.
What we have learned from an examination of Aristotle's passages on ta ekta and its
relationship to eudaimonia, then, is the following: ta ekta resonates with tyche insofar as it
serves to remind us of the ways in which we find ourselves in need of goods that don't
depend merely on our will or desire. Furthermore, since Aristotle says that it is difficult, if
not impossible, to engage in beautiful actions if one is not equipped for them, external goods
are necessary for human life, contributing to the possibility of beautiful action. However,
these goods are necessary insofar as we recognize that they, too, require creative activity in
putting them to work in our lives; i.e., they depend on the interplay between a person and the
world, with a creative impulse demanding that we recognize the ways in which we stand in
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need of goods that come to us, knowing that these goods-like friendship-depend on our
putting them to work in our lives.
Section III
Tyche and the Gods
Returning to the text of the Ethics, we see Aristotle reach an impasse in trying to
grapple with the relationship between eudaimonia and tyche, particularly regarding the role
of the gods in human life. He says that not only do some people mistake eutychia for
eudaimonia (EN l099b8), but that this mistake strikes at the heart of how one flourishes at
all. Moving away from what "some people" think to the philosophical matter at hand,
Aristotle says,
This is also why there is an impasse about whether eudaimonia comes by learning
[matheton] or habit [ethiston] or training of some other kind, or else comes to one's
side [paraginetai] by some divine lot [theian moiran] or even by tyche. Now if there
is anything else that is a gift of the gods to human beings, it is well-said [eulogon]
that eudaimonia too should be god-given, and it most of all human things, in the
measure by which it is the best of them. But perhaps this would be at home in
another sort of investigation, though it appears that even if eudaimonia is not god-
sent [theopemptos] but comes to one by means of arete and some sort oflearning or
training, it is still one of the most divine things, for the prize for arete also seems to
be the highest end and something divine and blessed [theion ti kai makarion]. (EN
l099b9-l8)
Significantly, this long and complicated passage follows the necessity of ta ekta in human
life, for if ta ekta plays a role in eudaimonia, to what extent, and how much? In the first
sentence here, Aristotle parses out what appears to be two dichotomous ways to consider
eudaimonia: Either it comes from some sort of internal fortitude depending on an individual
person, or it happens regardless of the person in question, as discussed in the last section.
Relating to the passage we just examined on the role of ta ekta and its importance for
eudaimonia, this sentence is a natural aporia for those who mistake eudaimonia for eutychia,
for it seems that either flourishing depends wholly on a person's habits and training, or that it
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happens beyond a person's control. However, if we keep in mind the ways in which Aristotle
thinks that human beings already stand in need of something outside themselves, as the force
of ta ekta indicates, then we might put into relief those who think that flourishing is a matter
of either-or in the way that people sometimes think. By moving from an endoxic starting
point, noting that many people mistake eutychia for eudaimonia, Aristotle strengthens the
philosophical matter at hand: Eudaimonia, we might conclude from this passage, resonates
with tyche in yet another way, for it gestures beyond an individual, ultimately returning her to
herself.
To see how this cashes out, we can note the presence oftheos in Aristotle's thinking
at this point, a word that gestures to the gods in Greek thought, but which also appears in
Homer as the happening of human life as a gift to human beings; it is the appearance of life
as life. The first of its five appearances in Aristotle's passage relates to tyche, for in saying
that the aporia about eudaimonia concerns what seems to be up to human beings at all or in
the first place, Aristotle's first use of this word relates utterly to human life as a happening, or
as something "divine" bestowed on human beings. The second word in this first phrase is
moira, translated generally as "fate." Thus, we might think of theian moiran as "the fate of
the gods (or the divine)" insofar as human life accepts this fate as the very condition for life
in the first place; we might also think of it as people generally do, which is to then say that
everything is out of a person's control, determined by the gods. In this latter and more
impoverished suggestion, to accept one's fate resonates with a punishment that one must
endure in light of the gods' desires, resulting in the resignation of one's life to matters out of
one's control. Or, as we saw with nemesis, we demand on object for our fury, forgetting that
the gods mutely deny our suffering. The former and way of considering moira, then, speaks
not to the fury of human life but to its very happening in what we are given. (This way
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speaks of what's possible for human life in its givenness, an idea to which I return in the final
chapter of this dissertation.)
The second and third mentions of theas speak of gifts that come to human beings
from the gods. With the language of "gift" present here, Aristotle intensifies the first usage
offered above; i.e., a "divine lot" is precisely what is bestowed on human beings in its~or
our~happening. Also as a gift, theas here echoes with ta ekta as something standing outside
or beyond a human being, coming to a person without her request. Tyche in this reading
coheres both with theamairein and the gift of the gods, for as we learned in the Physics, tyche
denotes that which pertains to human life as it finds itself kata symbebekas, in a continual
process of creative interpretation in and of the world by virtue of dianaia and praairesis. The
gift here, then, is nothing short of eudaimania itself, for in being "best" for human life, the
measure exceeds our capacity for it, standing in response and need of something beyond
ourselves.
Yet, while Aristotle says that another sort of investigation would be more appropriate
to a discussion of the relationship between eudaimania and theas, it is nonetheless well-said
that eudaimania belongs to theas in a meaningful way. Given that this text is an inquiry into
human nature, however, Aristotle says that even if eudaimania is not god-sent (theapemptos)
but comes to a person by means of arete, learning, and training, then it is still divine, for the
"prize" for arete also seems to be divine and blessed. This fourth and fifth mention oftheos,
then, as the possible dismissal of the gods, returns to the telos of arete as beyond a person;
i.e., arete as virtue or excellence finds its home gratuitous to a human being. Aristotle
suggests here that regardless of the ways in which one tries to flourish, the end of such
flourishing always points to another. Again we can put into relief the false inner-outer
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distinction that seems to pervade Aristotle's text, for what we learn in this passage is that
arete also speaks to more than a solitary individual and what is only up to her.
Now, how does tyche help us understand the movement between human life and its
excess in a way that gives a person over to herself? In speaking of tyche and theos, Aristotle
emphasizes how arete returns to a person as a gift that must gesture elsewhere. If the ends of
arete point beyond a human being, then how can a person seek to cultivate arete in the first
place? What we learn in this passage is that the strong intensification of the presence of
theos recalls Gadamer, who, as I noted in the introduction, reminds us that the Greeks speak
to "this truth: we are always other and much more than we know ourselves to be, and what
exceeds our knowledge is precisely our real being" (1986, 78). This way of being other,
then, solicits a necessary humility in light of what is possible for human life, but this humility
requires, as we will see in the next chapter, a courageous comportment to undertake and take
up one's life in the first place. The point of dwelling on the presence of theos in these
passages as they relate to tyche reminds us of such a challenge, for if even arete comes to a
person by means of learning or training and is not a gift of the gods, arete, like poiesis (as we
will see in chapter five), finds its end in another.
At this point, though, if we consider Aristotle's language to speak to a fundamental
excess of human life, and if we remember how it is that even an inquiry into nature is bound
to how we find ourselves kata symbebekos, we can wonder how it is that a person can act at
all in her life, let alone act in accordance with arete and towards eudaimonia. Such a
question is certainly not lost on Aristotle; in fact, by suggesting that the Ethics is
fundamentally an attempt to grapple with the radical contingency of human life, I have tried
to show precisely how carefully and seriously Aristotle takes such a challenge, and how the
language of ta ekta, eudaimonia, and theos all illuminate a peculiar facet of human nature, or
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a way of speaking of this nature in a certain respect that is often overlooked, as I have noted,
in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. While in the next chapter I return to the
relationship between theos and tyche as it emerges in conversation with physis, detailing
precisely how rare a truly fortunate person is, here we can keep in mind not only Aristotle's
references to the gods, or to life as a-and in its-happening, but also to how a person
responds to ta ekta in her life, mindful of continuously standing in need of others or the
watchful eye of a good daimon.
According to Aristotle, a complete life (bio teleio, EN 1098a18) is required for
eudaimonia as it comes to be as the energeia ofpsyche (soul, or life) in accordance with
arete; no short amount of time suffices for a complete life, and thus a short amount of time is
also insufficient for eudaimonia or coming to be blessed (EN 1098a18-2l). The word for
"blessed" in this passage is the same word in the longer passage I just discussed, and again
we can note how it speaks to the excessive activity of human life. According to Liddell and
Scott, the word makarios derives from the adjective makar-, which means "blessed,"
"happy," or "fortunate." Interestingly, in Hesiod, the word as a noun also means simply the
dead, as they become blessed after enduring suffering in their lives. Likewise, the word also
appears in Pindar as the name of islands where demi-gods and heroes would rest forever
(1992,484). In light of these possible translations of makarios and their emergence in Greek
thought, we must note how very strange it seems for Aristotle to speak of eudaimonia as an
energeia ofpsyche in accordance with arete if we were to consider arete to be translatable to
"virtue" as something that a person does in her life. If the telos of arete is found in a
complete life, and this complete life is most beautiful by virtue of how it stands in relation to
the excesses of this life, then how can a person aim to cultivate herself? That is, if the telos
of arete solicits the language of something beyond her control-whether it's eudaimonia as
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the watchful eye of a daimon, ta ekta as goods that come to her, or makarios as blessings
bestowed by the gods on human beings, or, even stranger, the language of the dead that
pervades this blessing-then what, really, can a person do in order to flourish?
Aristotle's response to these two related questions seems to be: everything and
nothing. While this response might appear to be a cheap answer to a difficult question,
Aristotle, as we have seen, shows us precisely the difficulty a person encounters when
thinking of or speaking of tyche and its related words insofar as they point beyond a person
as a reminder to take up her life in a creative interpretation of the world. Thus, the language
of theas, makarias, tyche, eudaimonia, and even arete in the Ethics speaks to an orientation
of human life as having its end in another. But, in having its end in another, or in relation to
others, a person becomes responsible for her life in its very happening; she is given back over
to her life in its happening. After all, as we learned from the Physics, that which pertains to
human beings by virtue of dianoia and proairesis belongs also to the language of tyche, such
that how things appear to us, in our thinking about them, makes all the difference in how we
engage the world.
Yet, given that Aristotle speaks of a complete life as necessary for eudaimonia, we
must now ask how it is that a person lives such a life as it appears to her, and how she can
grapple with what befalls her. The task of the next section, then, is to layout an account of
great and small fortunes that happen to a person, how someone responds to reversals of tyche
in her life, and how it is, given that the future is utterly unclear (EN 1101 aI8), this same
person can be called blessed as a human being (makarious d' has anthrapous, EN lI0Ia22).
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Section IV
Tvche, Solon, and Looking to the End
"[M]any changes and all sorts of chances come about in the course of a life [pollai
gar metabolai ginotai kai pantoiai tuchai kata ton bion]," Aristotle says, "and it is possible
for the most thriving person to fall into great misfortunes in old age, just as the story is told of
Priam in the epics about Troy; no one calls flourishing the one who suffers such fortunes and
dies in misery" (EN 11 00a5-9). Likewise, Aristotle invokes Solon, who says that we must
look to the end of a person's life to consider whether a person flourishes or not, both
regarding the totality of this life and in death (EN 11 OOal 0-1 00b20). Importantly, these two
examples recall a mythas about Priam and a story from Herodotus, the first historian who
himself reported stories. In order to see how Aristotle speaks of the possibility of flourishing
in one's life and also that which can or will make a human life more blessed, I now tum to
Aristotle's mention of Solon in order to see why it is that we can or should look to the end of
a person's life in order to consider whether this life can be said to flourish or not, given the
many great and small reversals of fortune that happen to a person over the course of her life.
Doing so accords with Aristotle's own discussion about the relationship between tyche and
eudaimonia on the heels of the our discussion in the last section regarding tyche, theos, and
what it might mean to be "blessed."
Aristotle raises the question about eudaimonia at the end of a life as follows:
"[O]ught one to call no other human being flourishing either who is still alive, and is it
necessary, as Solon said, to look at the end?" (EN 1100alO-l I) According to Aristotle, Solon
does not say that someone who is dead flourishes, but that the dead may in fact be blessed
(makariseien) in being beyond evils and misfortunes (kakan onta kai ton dystychematon, EN
11 00aI2-18)-i.e., in being beyond life. The first implication of this idea is that tyche
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belongs to life such that death puts one beyond it, even if the dead pertain to what it means to
be blessed (which, as I suggested in the last section, in a certain way means none other than
being dead). Yet, what concerns Aristotle is not so much how a person can be said to prosper
after death, but instead how the complete life belongs to those who are living, and maybe
how people receive those who are dead.
According to Herodotus in the Histories (1.30-34), the Athenian Solon, in his travels,
stays with Croesus at Sardis, who receives Solon as his guest. A few days into his stay,
Croesus asks Solon-on account of his "love of knowledge" and experiences while
traveling-whom Solon would deem most happy, Croesus thinking himself the most
flourishing of mortals. Solon answers quickly: Tellus of Athens. Not only did Tellus'
country flourish, but he also had two good and beautiful sons, who themselves had children,
whom Tellus saw mature. Moreover, Tellus died gloriously in battle, and was honored upon
his death by his fellow Athenians. Upon hearing this response, Croesus indignantly asks
Solon who he would deem as second place regarding eudaimonia, thinking surely that it
would be him. Solon responds: Cleobis and Bito, two strong youths who replaced oxen that
were to carry their mother to a festival in praise of Hera. Solon has heard that their mother
was so pleased at the actions of her children that she offered a prayer to Hera so that they
could become blessed. Her children, after the festivities had passed, slept in Hera's temple
and died, after which statues were made in praise of them and offered to Delphi.
After hearing these two accounts of people who can be said to flourish, Croesus
angrily asks Solon about his own status regarding eudaimonia, and why it is that he is not
considered to flourish. Solon responds, "A long life gives one to witness much, and
experience much oneself, that one would not choose" (1.31). Measuring a long life at seventy
years (about the age of Socrates' death), Solon speaks to the importance of a variety of
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experiences required for eudaimonia, many of which are out of a person's control. Yet,
given that Cleobis and Bito did not live lives as long as Tellus', sheer duration of a life is also
insufficient for a flourishing life, but the manners in which they lived and died allows Solon
to deem them happy.
Solon says that a person, until he dies, cannot be said to flourish but instead can be
called fortunate (1.32). Perhaps anticipating Socrates, or retroactively echoing his statement
about the needs of human beings and what it means to be self-sufficient in light of these
needs, Solon also says, "[N]o single human being is complete in every respect-something is
always lacking" (1.32). Precisely because we stand in need of much, tyche speaks to that
which pertains to human life as we gather ourselves together in light of what befalls us.
About the exchange between Solon and Croesus, Seth Benardete notes the differences
between the two ways in which Solon deems Tellus and the two brothers to flourish. The
first account, Benardete says, occurs because of what Solon himself has seen; the second
account comes to Solon by way of what he has heard. Tellus' long life and beautiful death
are praised by his fellow Athenians, and he dies in a glorious way in the city; Cleobis and
Bito die in a temple after performing an admirable deed. All are honored: Tellus on account
of his bravery and beautiful life as a ruler, the two brothers by virtue of their worthy actions
in honoring their mother under the demands of a festival praising Hera. For Benardete, this
difference points to the ways that "[t]he human good and the divine good are not the same"
(1999, 133); i.e., the ways that Tellus is praised by his fellow citizens after dying for the city
signifies how a human being can say that another has flourished, but the gods also have a say
in deeming a human life flourishing as well.
Solon's declaration that one must look to the end ofa life in order to see how it
flourishes thoroughly informs Aristotle's thinking at this point. Emerging from the concern
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of how a person grapples with extreme reversals of fortune in her life and how it is that
eudaimonia can maintain itself as the continuous work ofpsyche, Solon's statement arrests
Aristotle in his thought. Through the particularity of Priam's suffering as well as through the
specific lives of which Solon speaks, Aristotle reaches an impasse, reinforcing, in my
reading, the precariousness of human life even in its completion. If a person acts according
to arete, like Priam, but suffers a terrible death with his children all killed and everything in
disarray, then this person cannot be said to flourish. But, why not? Must one indeed look to
the end-and the end only-in order to speak to a person's life? If so, then we need to
consider the relationship between a person's death and the whole of her life such that a
measure for flourishing can appear.
According to Aristotle, the response to this question lies in how we consider a
complete life to require stability, mindful of the ways in which we belong to others, or to
something or someone other than ourselves. He says,
If in fact one ought to look to the end [to telos] and at that time judge each person
blessed [makarezein], not as being blessed but as having been so before, how is it not
strange [atopon] if, when someone flourishes, what belongs to him cannot be truly
judged as his because one does not want to call the living happy on account of
reverses [metabole] and because one assumes that happiness is something durable
and not at all easily changed, while fortunes often come back around again for the
same people? For it is clear that, if we were to follow along with the fortunes [tais
tychais], we would often call the same person happy and miserable in turns, making
the happy person out to be a kind of chameleon or a structure built on rotten
foundations. (EN 11 OOa32-11 OOb8)
The first thing to note about this passage is Aristotle's contrast between eudaimonia as it
demands a kind of stability, and that which comes from tyche as reversals of fortune, which
seems to threaten to topple a continuous activity of eudaimonia. If it's true, Aristotle says,
that Solon is right and we must look to the end of a life in order to see whether a person has
flourished, we can only look to this person's life, and not to her death; we simply can't know
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if this person is blessed or not upon the completion of a life. Regarding the passage I
examined from Solon, we might say that the knowledge of blessedness relates to theos in a
way that remains inaccessible to human beings, coming to us as a gift we cannot exchange or
return. Inversely, such is also the source of righteous indignation, as I mentioned earlier, for
there can be no object that receives human displeasure outside of human life itself. Thus,
Aristotle emphasizes that what pertains to human thought on this matter utterly concerns a
person's life, and this life seems to require some sort of stability or duration in order to be
complete.
No chance amount of time, Aristotle says, is sufficient for a complete life (EN
1101a15). As Nietzsche speaks of Lessing's son (2005, 451), Aristotle sensibly deems
duration important in human life in order to become good or flourish. As we see in the
longer passage above, however, duration alone does not suffice for a human life; rather, the
kind of life that one lives is what's most significant. Thus, when Aristotle seeks to preserve
eudaimonia as an active condition of flourishing that is receptive to the world and others, to
some extent Aristotle seems to buffer human life from reversals of fortune such that one can
persevere in light of hardships. Hence, Aristotle says that, were we to follow tyche and all
that comes with it, we would then call the same person flourishing and miserable, depending
on the circumstance and what happens to this person. Such schizophrenia no more belongs to
eudaimonia than it does to a single human life, the suggestion maintains; thus, what
"belongs" to this person is included in the measure of a person's life. Yet, given everything
we've discussed so far concerning the nature of eudaimonia as it demands a belonging
together of a person to another, or a person in excess of her life, then what "belongs" to a
person seems to be debatable in the usual sense of the word.
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Curiously, however, in saying that no chance amount oftime suffices for a human
life, Aristotle points to how such an amount of time is precisely what we have. And again,
rather than insulate a human life from tyche, or rigidify eudaimonia into something like an
accomplishable goal, Aristotle reinvigorates his discussion of eudaimonia in light of what
happens by tyche. For Aristotle, that Priam cannot be said to flourish, even though his life
was lived honorably and in accordance with arete, raises serious problems concerning what
happens to a person in her life and how it is that terrible misfortunes can disrupt a life that
might, at its end, be said to flourish.
Aristotle follows up this passage with an explanation of what can be said to belong to
a person in light of how this person stands in relation to others, or in the excess of a human
life. Regarding things that come by tyche, Aristotle says that "a human life has need of them
[things that come by tyche] as something added, as we said, while the things that govern
happiness are ways of being at work in accordance with arete" (EN 11 00b8-1 0). The
necessity of tyche, then, stands as a paradoxical thought: To what extent can tyche be
necessary for eudaimonia, especially in light of the ways that eudaimonia signifies an excess
of a person's life, as discussed throughout this chapter?
Section V
Tyche, Stability, and Forgetfulness
The key to understanding the relationship between Aristotle's thinking of the
necessity of tyche at this point and the competing necessity of stability in one's life lies in
how it is that those who are most fortunate pass their lives most continuously, not least, as we
might think. The reason for such stability is threefold, as Aristotle elucidates in EN 11 OOb 10-
1101a25, the passages subsequent to those discussed in the last section: First, the energeia,
or being-at-work, of a human life is more durable than episteme; second, the continuous lives
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of those who are blessed do not suffer from forgetfulness (lethen, 11 OOb 15); third, those who
actively take up or receive their lives will, in being most fortunate, act beautifully according
to given circumstances, for they will indeed lead poieticallives. This last point will be
elucidated more powerfully in the next chapter, when we tum to the kairos (circumstance) of
a beautiful life and its relationship to physis. Additionally, it lays the groundwork for my
concluding chapter regarding the relationship between tyche and poiesis.
Regarding the first point, Aristotle says, "in none of the acts [or'deeds,' ergon] of
human beings is stability present [or 'established,' 'made firm,' bebaiotes] in the same way it
is present in ways of being at work in accordance with arete; for these seem to be more
durable [or 'lasting,' 'staying in place,' monimoterai] even than episteme" (EN l100b 14-
16).30 In other words, stability accompanies the deeds of a human being, in their very action.
Intensifying my earlier claim that Aristotle insists that a human being cannot simply "have"
arete, we see that same point repeated here regarding the ergon of human life: That which is
fundamentally at work mandates activity at its base, and this activity is paradoxically more
stable than that which yields episteme. As discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation
and repeated at the beginning of this chapter, episteme cannot meaningfully pertain to a
human being in her activity; no "universal knowledge" of an acting human being applies to
the movement of life in its happening, For this reason, Aristotle suggests that arete only
comes to be in and through its happening, and thus is not a matter of merely "having" arete
30 The whole passage from the Ethics under consideration in this section is as follows: TIEPL OUOEV yap
olJ'rw<; UmlpXEL ,wv &V8pWTILVWV EPYWV ~E~CiL6nl<; W<; TIEPL ,a<; EWPYELCi<; ,a<; KCi" &pH~V'
flOVLfluJnpCiL yap KCiL ,WV ETILHlflWV CiU1"CiL OOKOUOLV ELVCiL' 1"OU,WV 0' CiU,WV Cil. HflLuJTCi'CiL
flOV LfluJnpCi LOLa ,a flaAWTCi KCiL OUVEXEOTCiTCi KCiTCi (fJv EV CiU1"CiI.<; 'OU<; flCiKCip LOU<;' 1"OU1"O yap
EOLKEV CiL'L0 ,ou fl~ yLVE08CiL TIEPL Ciu,a A~8~v. u8ap~EL O~ ,a (~'OUflEVOV ,Q EUOCiLflOVL, KCiL
EOTCiL OLa ~LOU ,OLOU1"O<;' &EL yap ~ flaAWTCi TIaVTWV TIpa~EL KCiL 8EWP~OEL ,a KCi" &pH~V. KCiL
,a<; ,UXCi<; O'LOEL KaUw,Ci KCiL TIaV'l] TIavTW<; EflflEAW<; 0 y' "w<; &A~8w<; &YCi80<;" KCiL ",Hpaywvo<;
eXVEU tjJ6you." (EN lIOOb13-22)
131
as one has trinkets. The emphasis here is on the action, or the work, of a human life. And
this work, says Aristotle, maintains itself through the continuous mindfulness of one's
actions. Energeia, in other words, entails movement insofar as the word literally means "to
be in work," or "in the work," which signifies a continuous motion or change, over and
against the regulatory stasis of episteme.
The second point of this passage pertains to those who pass their lives most
continuously in being at work in accord with arete, i.e., those who are blessed. Here
Aristotle narrows the scope of his discussion from the activity of all who are at work in the
way just mentioned to those who are most honored on account of eudaimonia, for these
people both act in accordance with arete and contemplate that which accompanies it.
Strangely, perhaps, the reason that these people are most honored is because they are not
forgetful (lethen). Thus, an enduring life in a certain manner-i.e., one that pertains both to
activity and a kind of mindfulness-may be said to demand an attunement to aletheia that
others fail to have, or may entail a recognition or a remembrance of some kind, or
mindfulness to keep forgetfulness at bay.31 Given that Aristotle's mention of forgetfulness at
this point provides a clue to the energeia of life for those who are blessed, I now briefly
recall two Socratic examples in order to understand the relationship between episteme and
memory, first in light of Socrates' philosophical practice as detailed in the Phaedo, and
secondly at the beginning of the Apology, wherein Socrates elucidates the perils of lethe
regarding the task of self-knowledge.
31 The emphasis on the perils of forgetfulness occurs also in Bk. VI, where Aristotle delineates those who
have techne from those with phronesis. Aristotle says that phronesis is an active condition involving more
than the logos. "A sign of this," Aristotle says, "is that forgetfulness [lethe] occurs in that sort of active
condition [techne], but there is no forgetting of practical judgment" (EN lI40b26-30). Again in Bk. IX
during a discussion offriendship and reciprocity, Aristotle says that "most people are forgetful
[amnemones], and aim at getting something good rather than at doing good" (EN 1167b27-28).
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In the first chapter of this dissertation, I discussed the ways in which aitia and logos
relate to each other in Aristotle's Physics in light of Socrates' tum to the logos in the Phaedo,
emphasizing the ways in which an aitia in the usual sense of the word fails to give the best or
most complete account of an event. Keeping that discussion in mind, another facet of
Socrates' account of his tum to philosophy is quite significant in this passage, which is that
an impossible inquiry into nature exceedingly blinded him, forcing him to unlearn, or forget,
everything he thought he knew (Phae. 96C). Among the kinds of questions that Socrates
asked in trying to make an inquiry into nature is of the genesis of memory (mneme), which he
twice mentions (Phae. 96B), before noting the ways in which this inquiry blinded him,
forcing him to surrender his inquiry. Given that Socrates, as I've noted, looks for the best
explanation, his tum to the logos speaks to the paralyzing effects of forgetfulness, for what
could be more anathema to philosophy than that which fundamentally opposes learning? In
other words, if an inquiry into nature can't provide an account of mneme, and if one is forced
to unlearn everything that one knows in such an investigation to the point where the inquirer
becomes blinded, then the problem, according to Socrates, seems to be that this person
continually finds himself in the process of unlearning (apemathon, Phaedo 96C), blinded and
stationary in light of the tasks of philosophizing.32
Moreover, in the Apology, Socrates begins his defense by noting that his prosecutors
spoke so persuasively in the first part of the trial that Socrates himself almost forgot who he
32 Aristotle discusses the relationship between memory and learning in the Metaphysics, wherein he says
that for human beings, "experience arises from memory, since many memories of the same thing bring to
completion a capacity for one experience [empeirias]" (Meta. 980b28-98la2). For Aristotle, the
importance of memory as bound to experience has the capacity to bring about knowledge (Meta. 981 a2-
10).
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was (epelathomen, the root of which is lethe, Apo. 17A).33 Juxtaposing this near forgetting
with his prosecutors' accounts of his philosophical practice in Athens, Socrates says that their
words bore little truth (alethes, Apo. 17A). However, Socrates was almost carried away, in
spite of himself, because of the seductive power of their words; indeed, he almost forgot who
he was. Trusting Socrates on this point, we can note the power of a certain kind of deceptive
logos in failing not only to attend to the movement of truth (a full discussion of which
escapes this dissertation), but also as bringing about an overwhelming forgetfulness that such
seduction induces.
Ifwe can say-as I think we must-that these two passages speak to the character of
Socrates' philosophical practice, then we can shed light on the perils of forgetfulness
according to Aristotle. First, in detailing the forgetfulness that attends to Socrates' youthful
inquiry into nature, we can note the implicit suggestion that philosophy, against this kind of
inquiry, demands attentiveness to aletheia as a continuous movement of philosophy, staving
off a paralytic blindness. Second, in speaking to the persuasive power of his accusers,
Socrates reminds us that a powerful logos can induce forgetting, even a forgetfulness of
oneself. However, if we attend also to this point, we learn through the trial what a truly
powerful logos is-none other than the life of Socrates.
These Socratic instances illuminate the dangers of lethe as they threaten philosophical
practice as a whole. Those who are able to ward off forgetfulness, however, or those who are
fortunate enough for it not to encroach upon them, Aristotle says, will said to flourish
throughout their lives, and thus will be honored as the most blessed. Thus, when one speaks
of the activity of eudaimonia as a comportment in and to the world, one must also be mindful
33 The ironic undertones of Socrates' statement here (i.e., that Socrates' life is characterized by him as
being in pursuit of self-knowledge while claiming never to have attained it) are powerful. However, we
might say that whomever Socrates considers himself to be, it is certainly not how his accusers render him.
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of its accompanying excess, for it is through this excess that things can be said to "belong" to
a human life in its very movement. Or, in other words, the difficulty of understanding a
blessed human life for Aristotle lies in our inability to be constantly at work in the act or
process of remembering, or the movement of aletheia.
Now something must be said about how these two points speak particularly to tyche,
for, echoing the Physics II. 4-6, Aristotle next says that "many things happen by tyche," and
it is here that we can anticipate the rest of this dissertation's trajectory through the next
chapter to its riveting conclusion: Aristotle says that these things can make life beautiful and
poietical, signifying a life that belongs more than to itself in having its end in another (EN
IIOOb22-29). Great misfortune can decimate a life, as happens in a way to Priam, for it's
possible that tyche "imposes pains and hinders many ways of being at work" (EN II OOa30);
misfortune, then-or a lack of tyche in the first place-can disrupt the activity of a life itself.
However, according to Aristotle, it is possible for those who suffer misfortunes to flourish, if
given the "fullness of some long time in which one had come to devote oneself to great and
beautiful aitiai" (EN IIOlall-14). We must remember, though, that the goal for Aristotle is
a certain SOli of complete life (EN 110 Ia17). Oppositely, if great fortunes come along, or
many turns of tyche, then a person's life may become more blessed (EN II OOb22-25),
already being blessed on accord of being at work and lacking forgetfulness in a certain way.
Regardless, Aristotle says, "one who is truly good and sensible will bear tyche
gracefully and will always act in the most beautiful way the circumstances permit" (EN
110 Ia2-3). We may note at first that such a statement gestures to the rarity of such a person,
recalling the phronimos discussed at the beginning of this chapter as one who recognizes the
fundamental contingency of human life; we may also anticipate the courage required in a
given circumstance in order to act most beautifully, according to the limits of that
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circumstance. What we need remember most of all, however, is that this statement is
predicated on a prior understanding of the relationship between tyche and eudaimonia as
discussed in this chapter, for tyche, in the way that Aristotle suggests here, makes possible
the advent of circumstances in the excessive movement of a human life, reminding us to
return to the task at hand, i.e., the phenomenon of tyche as it speaks not only to our human
nature, but also as it recalls us to physis itself.
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CHAPTER V
THE KAIROS OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE
[Palamedes] dedicated the dice he had invented to Tyche, in her sanctuary in Argos.
Tyche was not a popular divinity at the time. But one day everybody would recognize
her as the image that most closely resembles nature. When life strips off all her finery,
what remains is fortune. Everything that happens is a constant collision of tossed dice.
-Calasso (1994, 353)
Philosophers have taught us that the logic of freedom does not reside in transgression
as one might readily suppose, but precisely in the capacity to begin.
-Kristeva (2008)
In the last chapter we saw how the Nicomachean Ethics is, among many things, an
attempt to grapple with or understand the radical contingency of human life. We also saw
how the language of episteme necessarily fails to pertain to tyche, for unlike episteme, tyche
peliains to that which can be otherwise. In recalling how Heidegger says that one always
speaks about something in a certain respect and never directly (particularly for that which is
ade/on, as tyche is), we have begun to see how tyche appears always in relation to other
concerns for Aristotle. This thinking led us to an appreciation of the emergence of tyche in
the Ethics as it functions to remind us of how human life is bound up in these relations, and
how, because this is so, a person's responsibility for her life resonates in the energeia of her
life. This energeia, however, always gestures beyond a solitary individual, I have argued,
and so it is that an occasion opens up in which a person is constituted in the very moment of
being at work in her life. Such a movement, as I think it ought to be called, speaks to the
excessive dimensions of human life, but not in a way simply sunenders a person to another;
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rather, according to Aristotle, insofar as one acts, one always does so in a particular
circumstance, and never haplos; i.e., a person never "simply" acts, but also always in a
certain way, within the horizon(s) ofa given kairos.
Thus the double-gesture of tyche at this point in the Ethics: Insofar as tyche always
emerges in relation to other concerns for Aristotle, and insofar as we have seen Aristotle
demand that a person take herself up in light of ta ekta, theos, and a host of other related
words, I have noted the precarious tension that a person finds herself in when considering the
competing demands of a complete life and the generosity of tyche. These tensions speak to
the necessity to engage in beautiful actions without being certain what those actions are or to
foresee their possibility in advance, the difficulty of eudaimonia in the ways that it is
generally meant versus how Aristotle points to it as meaning something akin to a recognition
of a contingent life in the first place, and the strange language that pertains to such a
discourse at all. These obscure ideas serve to remind us, above all, of the challenges that life
itself holds in relation to tyche, and how tyche, in a certain sense, demands that we remember
such challenges. Hence my emphasis at the end of the last chapter on the stability of a
human life in its being at work, and why it is that we must ward off forgetfulness that
threatens not only to destabilize an inappropriate impetus to universal knowledge when
considering the particular tasks of human nature in light of ethical (or maybe even
philosophical) concerns, but also how we must, at base and always, be called back to the
stakes of the question that we began with in the first place, i.e., the role of tyche in an inquiry
into nature, both human and otherwise.
On the heels of these thoughts, this chapter is divided into two parts, beginning with
an articulation of tyche in relation to kairos in the Ethics in order to see how the language of
kairos helps us understand not just the particular instances a human being encounters in her
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life, but how life itself is given to a person in these instances as the possibility of life showing
itself in the first place. I will do so by way of Heidgger in order to show how these thoughts
resonate with how I characterize tyche in the introduction of this dissertation as making
possible the possibility of human life itself as an occasion inasmuch as it also is radically
receptive to life in its givenness, aware-sometimes importantly, sometimes not-of the
contigencies that make life possible. In order to see how this idea emerges in the Ethics, I
provide a sketch of tyche and kairos as they appear in Books II, III, IV, and VI, concentrating
on the following: the necessity of those acting to look at the circumstances surround the
occasion themselves (EN II 04a5-1 0); how willing acts require knowledge of particular
circumstances (EN llllaI4-15); the ways in which a "great-souled" person acts beautifully,
and how her beautiful actions speak to the greatest of external goods (EN 1123b15-21);
Aristotle's insistence that phronesis deals with particulars (EN 1142aI6); and what it means
to be helikia, or "flowering in life" (EN 1143b8-1 0).
This last emphasis occasions the second part of this chapter, which returns us to the
relationship between the Ethics and the Physics via Socrates' philosophical practice, insofar
as Aristotle speaks to the rarity of beinglbecoming both euphuein ("good natured," or "good
by nature") and eutychein, which raises serious questions about the possibility of human
flourishing in the first place. We will then have the occasion to puzzle over the complicated
relationship between these words in making a return to physis, the very place where this
dissertation began, seeing how Aristotle reinforces the necessity of making a return to physis
at the very end of the Ethics. The context for such a discussion is none other than Socrates'
life, which, at the end of the Phaedo, is deemed to be the best (aristou), most phronetic, and
most just (Phaedo 118A). Considering Socrates' life, in other words, gives us the occasion
for the question of tyche again to appear to us in its-and our-potentiality.
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Section I
Tyche and Kairos: The Opportune Moment
In his Phenomenological Interpretations ofAristotle, Heidegger says, "The
involvement with the world of care is apparently, in apprehension, a seriously adopted task,
one which allows no rest, day or night, and to which life has supposedly committed itself in
full, and yet actually (for apprehension itself, 'still at times') it is a mere letting oneself be
pulled along, letting oneself be transported" (2001, 102). In light of the articulation of life
here as a matter for thinking as well as that which allows this thinking to already emerge in
the first place, Heidegger says, "[t]he question is how, from a chairological point of view, life
as such can and does announce itself (how it occurs) in apprehension" (2001,102).
Suggesting a double way of understanding apprehension-first, as something that suddenly
announces itself to life, stopping it and us in our tracks, and second, as we struggle to
apprehend something ourselves-Heidegger speaks importantly of a "chairological" point of
view, which is precisely what human life has such that it can be addressed and announced.
Congruently, we can recall the first two chapters of this dissertation in how it is that we found
ourselves necessarily leading ourselves forward in a certain way, which in tum pulled us
through an inquiry into nature, while seeing how it is that human life emerges in such an
inquiry. That is, in taking something as the matter of our investigation, i.e., tyche, what has
opened for us is a discussion of human nature in its very emergence, resonating beyond and
back to a particular human life. Inasmuch as we have taken something as this matter,
however, it has importantly already claimed us (or at least me) in advance, such that we can
ask about it in meaningful ways. The task that precedes this section and continues through its
duration, then, demands an openness to the possibility of philosophical inquiry, something to
which we must continuously affirm and submit.
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In fact, according to Heidegger, it is when speaking about possibility that the world
itself opens to us, always familiar and always anew; such is the space for philosophizing (cf.
Heidegger 2000,9,13-14,21). Yet, as Heidegger maintains, possibility-and the world
opened up through possibility-is never merely withheld from us any more than it is simply
given. A longer passage from "The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics" will help ground
the task of kairos and its role in the Ethics, examined through our "kairological point of
view." Heidegger says,
Certainly, beings remain as they are revealed to us. And yet beings are not able
to shrug off what is worthy of questioning: they, as what they are and how they are,
could also not be. By no means do we experience this possibility as something that
is just added on by our own thought, but beings themselves declare this possibility,
they declare themselves as beings in this possibility. Our questioning just opens up
the domain so that beings can break open in such questionworthiness. (2000, 31-32)
Before continuing with the rest of this passage from Heidegger, we must pause to consider
the movement of which Heidegger speaks here. First, in recognizing the contingency of
particular beings, when one speaks of possibility, it is not simply as something not-yet-done;
rather, the work (or energeia, as I said in the last chapter) of beings stands in such a way as to
already be their possibility through their declaration of it-as Heidegger might say, through
their being in the first place. Yet, insofar as what is possible for human beings in particular
stands in relation to a kind of worth, this worth, too, is not something merely added; rather, it
demands a breaking open in terms of questioning, such that we may be worthy of the
questions that address us in a way that claims us through our very being. But let us continue
this passage:
What we know about how such questioning happens is all too little and all too crude.
In this questioning, we seem to belong completely to ourselves. Yet it is this
questioning that pushes us into the open, provided that it itself, as a questioning,
transforms itself (as does every genuine questioning), and casts a new space over
and through everything. [... ] Every being, in tum, has this Possible in it, in a
different way in each case. (2000,32)
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What we learn here from Heidegger is that the task of questioning seems to take place in a
moment, and that in this moment we seem to belong "completely to ourselves." What's
missing from such a formulation, however, as Heidegger rightly notes, is the way that a being
is opened up through the work of the question such that whatever it means for a being to
"belong" to itself is immediately transfOlmed in light of the question at hand, changing, we
might add, everything for this being. When Heidegger says that a new space is cast through
everything, I take him most seriously to mean that everything changes for a being through
and in the act of questioning; the world becomes anew. Hence, when Heidegger says that we
are pushed into the open in the moment in which we are given over to ourselves, this twofold
stance of beings-or more specifically, human beings-demands that we raise ourselves to
the tasks of the questions that claim us. And in this moment we must answer.
"Moment": This word is one possible translation of kairos. Heidegger speaks of
kairos as "time," saying that "every mode of occurrence has, as such, its determinate
(factical) chairological character [... J, its determinate relation to time, i.e., to its time, and this
relation lies in the sense of the nexus of actualization offacticity" (2001,102).34 The
question, then, for Heidegger is "how, from a chairological point of view, life as such can and
does announce itself (how it occurs) in apprehension" (2000, 102). The announcement of life
itself, then, takes place in time, but in its time, occurring through the ways it apprehends us in
such a way that we must respond or act. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, for
Aristotle, one never acts haplos, but always in a given circumstance; likewise, we might add,
no one ever "simply" gives a logos, but always also speaks in a certain respect. And for
34 In speaking of kairos as time, I don't mean to suggest that Heidegger speaks here of merely
chronological time or a passing of "now" points; such would most likely be the domain of chronos. Thus,
as "time" for Heidegger, kairos is the most important sense of moment, for it speaks both to change and
possibility.
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Aristotle, the ability to act in a certain respect, within a particular circumstance, is what's
important and is why, moreover, a normative ethics (so popular in contemporary scholarship)
fails to attend to the tasks of human life or speak to the emergence of human life in these
moments, as becomes evident in Bk. II of the Ethics.
According to Liddell and Scott, the word kairos, in addition to being translatable as
moment or time, also bears a sense of measure, which, for Aristotle, is precisely that which
makes a person answer or act in a moment. Interestingly, however, another translation of
kairos speaks to the activity of weaving, and as a different noun, a kairos is "the row of
thrums in the loom, to which the threads of the warp are attached" (1992, 392). As the
residual threads left on a loom after the intended weaving has been completed, these threads
are sometimes incorporated into the next weaving project and sometimes left along the plane
of the loom, but in any or either event, they signify as a reminder the relation between the
loom and the thing made. The kairos, then, in this sense, also speaks to the first translations
of the word I offered above, for it can be understood as the circumstance of the action, or
where the act comes to fulfillment; it functions, in this way, also as a measure in serving as
the opportune moment.
In speaking of the tasks of an ethical discourse, Aristotle says that one needs
acknowledge in advance that a logos pertaining to acting (prattein) must speak in outline
(typos), and not precisely (EN 11 04a). In this statement, Aristotle rearticulates the
shortcomings of episteme in an ethical discourse, and we can recall his many statements
concerning how one must not look for the same sort of precision in alllogoi, agreeing with
how even the same thing must be spoken of in different respects given different kinds of
inquiries. One must speak in outline about such matters, however, if one is to speak at all,
because logoi must accord with the matter at hand. And so, Aristotle says, when actions are
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involved, the measure of stability that pertains to, say, episteme, is lost. But, as I said in the
last chapter, what might emerge is a different kind of stability through the activity of
energeia.
In fact, when speaking about kairos, Aristotle seems to have this measure in mind, for
one never acts haplos, but always in a certain circumstance. He says,
And since the general discourse (or "logos of the whole," katholou logou) is of
this sort, still more does the logos that concerns particulars lack precision
(ho peri ton kath' hekasta logos ouk ekei takribes), for it falls under no art
(technen) nor under any skill that has been handed down, but it is always
[necessary] for those who are acting to look at the circumstances surrounding
the occasion themselves (dei d' autous aei tous prattontas ta pros ton kairon
skopefn),just as is the case also with the medical [art] or [the art of] steering
a ship. (EN 11 04a5-1 0)
Beginning this passage with how one must speak regarding actions, Aristotle demands that,
when speaking particularly, one must always look to the circumstance, or kairos, of the
action itself. Given that the logos must harmonize not only with the whole matter at hand but
also with particulars, the kind of logos appropriate to acting must pay attention to the
occasion as it arises within a given circumstance. In the same way that medicine must pay
attention to the particular person being treated while harmonizing with the knowledge that
comes with the medicinal arts, Aristotle here reminds us of the particularity of acting in a
given circumstance. Or as he says in the Metaphysics, a doctor does not cure "human
beings" katholou-except incidentally-but "Callias or Socrates or any of the others called
by such a name, who happens to be a human being." The reason for this is because "what is
treated is particular" (Meta. 981 a14-981 a24). Thus, in acting particularly, a doctor treats a
patient individually, always in relation to the whole (i.e., "human beings," or the medicinal
arts), but never as such. Rather, one must look to the circumstances surrounding the occasion
of the techne ("productive knowledge," or "art") in order to have any chance of bringing
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about health. In other words, a doctor without a patient makes no sense; a doctor never
simply heals.
Likewise, the second example in this passage speaks to the knowledge of steering a
ship. Prevalent in Aristotle's texts, the image of a sailor on a ship, being tossed hither and
thither by stonns, anchors Aristotle in thinking about kairos. In Bk. III of the Ethics
concerning an aporia that Aristotle encounters when speaking of willing, unwilling, and
nonwilling acts, Aristotle says that a sailor in a ship would never simply willingly throw
goods overboard, but if the kairos presents itself, the sailor would do so for his own sake and
for the sake of others. This sort of mixed action (mixed because the measure for such an
action is detennined in part by the circumstance that presents itself as much as it demands a
response from those acting) is never "simply" done. Instead, "since at the time when they are
done they are chosen, the end for which an action takes place is in accordance with its
occasion" (EN 1110a12-13). In the case of the seaman, what is done is what is chosen; the
choice is in the act of throwing things overboard. This thought leads Aristotle to conclude
that "one has to say what is willing or unwilling at the time when someone does it; and one
does things of this sort willingly, for the arche kineseos of the parts that are instrumental in
such actions is in oneself, and anything of which the source (arche-) is in oneself is also up to
oneself either to do or not" (EN 111 Oa13-17). Yet, what is "up to oneself' is never simply
so; rather, without a circumstance that presents itself to a person, no action is possible. In
being attentive to the kairos, then, the sailor's knowledge extends to acting through the
collapse of choosing and doing. Such a collapse demands an uncanny foresight based on the
sailor's techne, but the strangeness of the particular cases Aristotle speaks of here must not
go unnoticed: Both the doctor and the sailor, in order to thrive in their being, require
extraordinary circumstances in order to respond through their potential to be who they are.
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Storms, like human bodies, are or can be unruly, and thus the occasion of a terrible storm or a
very ill person demands that the sailor and the doctor answer the demands of the kairos that
presents itself to them.
Still, Aristotle recognizes, "it is difficult sometimes to distinguish what sort of thing
should be chosen in return for what [... ] and still more difficult for those who have discerned
it to abide by what they have chosen, since for the most part the things one anticipates
(prosdokia) are painful" (EN IIIOa30-35). As we shall see, a person who can discern things
in this way is phronetic, a word that resonates not only with acting, but denotes a kind of
mindfulness-if not remembrance-of what is entailed in acting and thinking (or in thinking
as a kind of acting). Moreover, according to Aristotle, depending on the kairos, an act is
willing or not: "[I]t is not easy to give an account of what sort of things one ought to choose
in return for what sort of ends, since there are many differences among the particular
circumstances" (EN III Ob6-8). Regarding the possible ends, we can speak to the sailor
throwing things overboard in a storm in order to save himself and others on the ship; the ends
in this case would be a triumph of an attempt to save human lives rather than greedily try to
have it all by keeping precious goods.
Yet also in the passages detailed here Aristotle concerns himself not only with what's
at stake in acting, but in how one can speak about acting at all, if actions always take place in
particular circumstances in and through which a person must respond. In beginning this
section with Heidegger, I tried to explain what, really, opens itself to us in thinking about
kairos, both as a measure for acting and as an opportunity. We can see in Aristotle's thinking
that kairos brings us outside of ourselves in a way that speaks to our potential in its
actualization through acting, like a skilled sailor in a storm; it is a moment of declaration
concerning the possibility of human life. But we can also see the ways in which kairos, in its
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happening, allows us to happen as well. That is, in being a moment of crisis or decision,
kairos signifies a time outside of time, which may resonate with the time of philosophy.
To this point, Heidegger says, "[p]hilosophy is essentially untimely because it is one
of those few things whose fate it remains never to be able to find a direct resonance in their
own time, and never to be permitted to find such a resonance" (2000, 9). This is because
"philosophy either projects far beyond its own time or else binds its time back to this time's
earlier and inceptive past. Philosophizing always remains a kind of knowing that not only
does not allow itself to be timely but, on the contrary, imposes its measure on the times"
(2000,9). Ifphilosophy is to have a time or a place, it must do so in the sense of kairos,
which stands outside and perhaps measures chronological time. Or it must resonate with
place in the sense of out-of-place or strange, atopia, as discussed in earlier chapters regarding
the "place" of tyche in the Physics as well as the life of Socrates. In either event, a real
question, as noted at the beginning of this section, illuminates a moment that changes the
whole of everything. Or, to call upon Heidegger one more time (and in anticipation of the
next and final chapter), "[i]n the poetry of the poet and in the thinking of the thinker, there is
always so much world-space to spare that each and every thing-a tree, a mountain, a house,
the call of a bird-completely loses its indifference and familiarity" (2000, 28). This loss of
familiarity, one could say, is at base a recognition of kairos as the circumstances in which a
person can be said to flourish. It is the moment when we are pushed out into the open.
When the world becomes anew, when questions claim us in ways that we couldn't
foresee, we are reminded of tyche as the kairos that makes life possible for us from the very
beginning. By "beginning," I mean not only the ways in which we find ourselves already
claimed by the tasks of living, as echoes in the wisdom of Silenus, but also in the ways in
which we are always asked to begin again, even philosophically (as evidenced by Schelling's
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Ages ofthe World, in which the untimeliness of philosophy seeks to measure the time in
which philosophy does, or might, take place). The picture we get from Aristotle on these
matters, then, is not so much a measure of human life or acting that imposes itself on a given
kairos, but instead relates to how life importantly shows itself in these moments. For this
reason, kairos serves as the measure for acting as it does for thinking. However, to be able to
respond to a kairos, as with tyche, a person must already know how to act, not in a
programmatic or calculated kind of way, but in a way that's utterly receptive to the kairoi
that present themselves, for different kairoi call for different responses.
In speaking of greatness of soul, megalopsychia, in Bk. IV of the Ethics, Aristotle,
after discussing the commonly held opinions of the negative characteristics of this
comportment to the world, says that one who is truly great-souled will bear ta ekta most
beautifully, for the truly great-souled recognize that beautiful erga are honored by the gods
(EN 1123b13-25). As a result, a great-souled person maintains, perhaps counter-intuitively,
moderation in the face of eutychia, even though things that come by eutychia can contribute
to the greatness ofa person (EN 1124a22-25). Moreover, the great-souled person takes great
risks (or has' great possibility' or 'power,' megalokindynos), implying a certain kind of
danger in disregarding his life, "on the ground that it is not on just any terms that life is worth
living" (apheides tou biou has ouk axion on pantas zen, EN 1124b5-1 0); some situations call
for risking one's life while others don't, for the situations that do depend on the worth of the
exchange of the great-souled person's life for another good. The courage entailed in such a
comportment signifies the most positive aspects of this kind of person, leading Aristotle to
conclude that the great-souled person might be the best human being (EN 1123b26-29). The
downfall ofa great-souled person's life, though, is that he ultimately maintains a greatness of
his own soul, and finds or declares himself worthy of that which comes to him. Recalling the
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discussion of nemesis in the last chapter, we might say that the great-souled person's
downfall is his radical hubris in thinking that he does, in fact, deserve the goods that come to
him, and does so in a way, according to Aristotle, that thereby determines this person to think
himself worthy of great things (EN 1123b14-16); this person thinks he deserves his dessert.
And in so doing, this person may ultimately be stingy with life (something against which
Socrates warns at the end of the Phaedo [116EJ) on account of this person deciding in
advance what should be risked in return for what. This person also ultimately overlooks and
abandons the force of kairos, because everything is already decided in advance (e.g., what he
owes to whom, what he deserves, how he should act); no true risk is involved for him, for
this person is not receptive to transformation.
The difference between this kind of person, who bears ta ekta calmly on account of
having decided in advance the worth of goods and how he stands in relation to such goods,
and the person with phronesis is clear: A phronimos is able to recognize the weight of
circumstances in order to discern how to act or to think. Both thoughtful (or deliberative)
and active, a phronimos recognizes kairos for what it is, i.e., an opportune moment in which
transformation is possible and in which, moreover, a radical openness allows for life to
declare itself as well. According to Aristotle, phronesis has to do with particulars, which
become known by experience, but this experience requires a length of time (and maybe a
complete life), for experience comes about (ginetai) through time (chronou poiei ten
empeirian, EN ll42a12-l5). Note here that time as chronos is not the deciding factor for
Aristotle, but is instead is the bare skeleton onto which life is given or comes about. Among
the many things that Aristotle says we must consider in a discussion ofphronesis, then, is
this: "why it is that a child might become a mathematician, but not wise [sophos] or
knowledgeable about nature [Physikos]. Is it not because things of the one sort come from
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abstraction [literally, 'taking away from,' or 'separable,' perhaps from a person,
aphaireseos], while the sources [archai] of things of the other sort come from experience?
The young are not convinced of the latter, but talk about them, but what the former things are
is not unclear [ade/on]" (EN 1142aI5-20). That is, in separating oneself from a discussion
(or even dialogue), no real risk is involved, for one makes an inquiry into that which can't be
otherwise; a person has no stake in a discussion or inquiry, for all things are either already
clear or promise clarity in the way that mathematics demands solutions. Given that a person
and life itself can be otherwise, however, phronesis~curiously in speaking to the task of
making an inquiry into nature, which, as we saw concerning contemporary scholarship on the
Physics, supposedly pertains to that which can't be otherwise~ultimately demands a
fundamental recognition of the contingency of life, kairos, and tyche.
As I said earlier, kairos serves as a measure that speaks to an opportune moment in
which a person is at risk. In so doing, it pertains also to tyche, for as I've said throughout this
dissertation, tyche speaks to the circumstances in which a person happens to find herself. In
this sense, phronesis seems to require an uncanny ability to know the measure in advance of
a circumstance; yet Aristotle, in articulating and rearticulating the particularity of kairos,
might resist such an uncanny knowledge, were it not for proairesis (choice), which demands
a kind of grasping in advance (if we emphasize the pro- character of the word, which we can
hear in the name "Prometheus" [literally, "foresight"]). If the thing chosen is the thing done,
then what is done is also in a certain way chosen in advance, and yet what I've maintained
throughout this discussion is the very real ways in which a person is at risk in a multitude of
activities, from making an inquiry into nature to acting in one's life. In fact, what's startling
about the last passage just discussed from Aristotle is the way in which he seems to point
precisely at how physis can never stand as an object for a subject; such a demeanor is
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reserved for the youth who are interested in mathematics (and also students of Anaxagoras?),
without themselves having a stake in its matter, or in looking for the best logos. In other
words, an inauthentic relationship to oneself emerges in making an inquiry removed from
one's place, for a recognition of contingency and variability is given over to that which can't
be otherwise, and thereby denies one's own life in the process.
In thinking of Socrates' second sailing and what I have offered as Aristotle's tum to
the logos throughout this manuscript, or in thinking aitia and logos together as that which
pertains to human beings in giving an account of nature as that which appears to us in our
explanations (remembering that tyche is precisely that which appears to us in an inquiry into
nature), then we can see how tyche and kairos weave together in how they open human life in
order for it to shine through. Again we can note the untimeliness of such thinking: One must
have some sort of primordial insight to be able to discern how to act in a given kairos, or in
light of tyche, and one must choose such actions in advance. Bounded between an "already"
and a "not-yet": Such is the uncanny time for philosophizing, a time at which, as Emerson
says, all things are at risk?5
35 In "Circles," Emerson says, "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all
things are at risk" (2001, 177). Interestingly, Emerson speaks to many concerns laid out in this chapter
concerning the importance of risk and receptivity, particularly regarding the force of circumstances. While
outside the scope of this discussion, Emerson's essay "Fate" grapples with many ofthe same issues here,
but considered from the opposite perspective, i.e., the notion of fate as limitation, and circumstance as
something to be tarried with, ifnot overcome. Speaking of "tyrannical Circumstance" (2001, 265),
Emerson says, "[t]he Circumstance is Nature. Nature is, what you may do. There is much you may not.
We have two things,--the circumstance, and the life. Once we thought, positive power was all. Now we
learn, that negative power, or circumstance, is half. Nature is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull,
the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like jaw [... ] The book of Nature is the book of Fate" (2001, 266).
For Emerson in this essay, the human struggle is to understand and fight against "whatever limits us,"
which is what we call Fate (2001, 268), knowing that sheer power cannot overcome the tyrannical
circumstances of nature. This struggle, however, is creative and noble: "If the Universe have these savage
accidents [human beings], our atoms are as savage in resistance" (2001, 269). Recognizing the impetus of
nature, then, we also fight against that which limits us, trying to carve our own space and lives. In this
way, the "circumstance" never truly stands oppressively over and against a person; rather, "[t]he secret of
the world is, the tie between person and event. Person makes event, and event person" (2001, 274). Here
Emerson explicitly touches base with Aristotle, concerning kairos and risk: There is no kairos hap/os;
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Interestingly, in his discussion ofphronesis, Aristotle speaks to those who may be
able to demonstrate the attributes ofphronesis (and also of sophia)36 in their lives as having
the capacity to discern correctly a given horizon (horosin orthOs), having been sharpened by
experience (EN l143b13-l4). These people, who seem to have uncanny insight by nature,
are said to be helikia: flowering in life.37 A more fundamental understanding of the root of
this word, however, returns us to helios, or the sun, as an extraordinary greatness that makes
things visible. When we encounter these sun-like people, Aristotle says, we ought to pay
attention to what they say to us, whether they demonstrate through knowledge to others the
things they think, or whether they make undemonstrated statements, for in either case, we
might surmise, they shed light on something beautiful and important (EN l143b 11-15).
Thus, Aristotle tells us, if we are receptive, we witness others who are able to discern and
deliberate in such a way that things are made visible not only for this person, but for others as
well; the sun, too, requires its shadows.
Because of this, according to Aristotle, phronesis, while it concerns things that are
just, beautiful, and good for a human being, "we are no more able to perform [or "make,"
rather, always in a certain way, to a certain person, and in a certain time. The co-constitutive motion
between a person and circumstance culminates in letting something shine through that relationship, and
examining what one finds. For this reason, according to Emerson, "[t]he soul contains the event that shall
befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; (... ] The event is the print of your form"
(275). This statement does not mean that one need only think of a situation and it will happen, but the
foresight involved here returns us to the way in which Heidegger speaks of already being claimed in ways
that are not solely up to us such that something can happen in a kairos in the first place.
36 This particular discussion ofphronesis occurs in a larger discussion of nous ("intellect"), wherein both
sophia and phronesis pertain to nous, albeit in different ways. In Aristotle's concluding discussion at this
section, before making a dramatic tum in his discussion that pertains particularly to the tasks of logoi in
speaking about these matters in an attempt to "become good," Aristotle describes the relationship between
phronesis and sophia standing together in a way that pertains to tyche (,L fJ.EV ouv EO,tv ~ cPPOVTjEOl<; Kat
OOcPLa, Kat TIEpt ,Lva EKa,Epa ,uYXavEl); they come together by tyche, perhaps in one life (EN 1143b16-
17).
37 Aristotle says, "A trace or sign of this is that these people [the flowering] seem to come about by nature"
(OTjfJ.ELOV 6' on Kat ,aL<; ~AlKLal<; OLOfJ.E8a UKOAou8ELV Kat ~6E ~ ~A.lKLa VOUV EXEl Kat YVWfJ.TjV W<; ,~<;
cPUOEW<; aL,Ca<; OUOTj<;, EN 1143b8-10).
152
poiein] these actions by knowing about them, if indeed hai aretai are hexeis [active
conditions]" (EN 1143b20-26). Knowledge~or as Aristotle says here, the being of the logos
(EN l143b24)~is insufficient for truly instructing another what to do, if a person isn't
already comported in such a way as to be claimed by the tasks of acting or thinking, open in
advance, as it were, for transformation and cultivation to be possible, even in light of the
logos; i.e., if one doesn't know how to listen, then a logos falls on deaf ears. Or as Aristotle
says a few pages later, "arete makes [poiez] the choice be set straight [proairesin orthen], but
the being done [or 'acting,' prattesthai] of everything that is naturally [pephuke] for the sake
of that choice results not from arete but from some other power [or 'capacity,' 'potential,'
dynamei5s]" (EN 1144a21-24). Ifwe recall chapter three of this dissertation wherein I
intimated that arete has its end in another, then we can note the way in which choice in this
passage has its end (or beginning) in arete. But, the "being done" of everything also
resonates both with physis and dynamis, nature and "potential," and so we come full circle in
this section: Might the real task at hand, from Aristotle's thinking, demand that we are called
to the force of our own possibility in a way that already claims us through the questions we
encounter? If so, then we can hear how kairos in the way I've laid it out here might be
another way of speaking of tyche, containing within it a certain kind of measure (i.e., the
radical contingency of human life combined with the foreboding knowledge that this life
could, in fact, be otherwise, or not be at all).38 Tyche can also serve as a reminder that, when
we're fortunate to encounter the kairos of our life as it shines through another, as is the case
with those who are helikia, we are reminded of what, really, appears to us, which, as we saw
Heidegger say, is nothing short of life itself.
38 In fact, the Roman goddess Fortuna (from tyche) is also often called "Occasio" ("Occasion"), a Latin
translation of the Greek kairos.
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While kairos, as I've said, means not only the opportune moment but also signifies
thread left on a loom, either to be woven into the next garment or abandoned after a garment
is completed and always as a measure of what is being done, I now have a fonnidable task in
front of me, which is to speak to the "other power" mentioned in the last passage from
Aristotle, weaving it into what I've laid out here. If Heidegger is right and philosophy is
always untimely, then speaking of this dynamis involves a great risk indeed, for in the next
section we will see how seriously Aristotle takes the task of the possibility of human beings
becoming good at all or in the first place; this possibility belongs to those who are truly
fortunate (alethos eutuxesin). We will see, then, how Aristotle links theos to physis at the
end of the Ethics concerning what it means to be fortunate in this way. I will also, though all
too briefly, explicitly return to Socrates, who has (you might have been able to discern)
functioned as a phantom limb thus far throughout this manuscript, in order to organize our
thoughts concerning what it means to be truly fortunate in the way that Socrates surely is.
Section II
Tyche, Physis, and the Possibility of Becoming Good
According to Werner Jaeger, after leaving Athens and heading to Asia Minor after
Plato's death in 348 B.C., Aristotle dedicated an altar-elegy to Eudemus that speaks of
Socrates, or Plato:
Coming to the famous plain of Cecropia
He piously set up an altar of holy Friendship
For the man [Plato? Socrates?] whom it is not lawful for bad men even to praise,
Who alone or first of mortals clearly revealed,
By his own life and by the methods of his words,
That a man becomes good and happy at the same time.
Now no one can ever attain to these things again. (1962, 107)
In speaking of Socrates (or Plato) here, we are reminded of those who are helikia, shedding
light not only by virtue of the method of their logoi (which some people are unable to hear),
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but also because of the lives that they lead. Since Aristotle urges us to pay attention to these
people when they speak or when we witness their lives, we will return in the end to Socrates
in the Phaedo, a dialogue that happens, as I've said, with the aid of tyche. In so doing, I will
take up Socratic courage when facing death and will explain how it is that tyche requires the
courage to engage in a beautiful life.
First, however, we must begin with a concluding passage from the very end of the
Ethics, with which I began this dissertation. Arguably the most aporetic phrase in the
entirety of the Ethics, we see Aristotle layout here precisely how difficult it is to "become
good," and how it is that Aristotle calls us back to physis in considering what is possible for
human life:
[S]ome people think one becomes good [y(vw8aL b' &ya8olJ<; O'[OVrlXL] by nature
[¢UOEL], others think it is by habit [E8EL], and still others think it is by teaching
[bLbaXtl]. As for what comes from nature, it is clear that it is not up to us that it
is present [To IlEV ouv Tfl<; ¢UOEW<; bEAOV w<; OUK E¢' ~IlLV lmapXEL], but by some
divine explanation [bLa Hva<; 8da<; alT(a<;] it belongs to [or 'governs'] those who are
truly fortunate [WL<; w<; &A118<.0<; EUTUXEOLV lmapXEL]. (EN 1179b20-23)
In this passage Aristotle makes a return to the very beginning of the Ethics, in which he says
that "[e]very art and every inquiry [methodos], and likewise every action [praxis] and choice
[proairesis], seems to aim at some good [agathou]," and for this reason, "it has been
beautifully [kalos] said that the good is that at which all things aim" (EN 1094al-3). If the
good is that at which all things aim, then it seems that, by the end of the text, we should hit
the target; i.e., we should gain clarity regarding what this "good" is, how it comes about, and
how a person might be able to become good. Yet, by emphasizing overlooked passages of
the Ethics, we have begun to see how a programmatic regulation of ethical development is
not as tidy as one might think, for even here-at the end of the text-Aristotle returns us
again to the task of becoming good (that at which all things aim), noting that endoxic
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statements concerning becoming good by nature, habit, or teaching fail in some way to miss
the mark concerning human nature.
The difficulty of this passage lies not only in how these commonly held opinions fail
to speak to the whole of ethical life, but moreover speaks to the task at hand in a
consideration of the relationship between physis and tyche. Those who are truly fortunate,
Aristotle says, are so by nature in a way that is not up to them. However, as we saw in the
last chapter and in the first section of this one, such an implication does not demand a
surrendering of oneself to powerful whims beyond one's control; rather, the opposite holds
true: In a recognition of tyche as that which comes to us, we must respond. The reciprocal
interplay between the two threads demands, at base, a recognition of the contingency of
human life, knowing that it can always be otherwise or not be at all. Thus, the emphasis on
that which comes to us (by tyche, ta ekta, theos, or that which is kata symbebekos) never
culminates in a mere "having" of goods, virtue, or life; rather, it is a matter of recognizing
how life itself comes to be present in the energeia of human life. As I noted in the last
chapter, energeia speaks to a continuous motion or movement of life, and thus is the work of
a human life itself. Thus, when Aristotle speaks of arete (as I also discussed in that chapter),
insofar as the telos of arete points beyond a solitary individual, this person is returned to
herself in the form of a life at work.
While this longer passage from the Ethics returns us explicitly to an inquiry into
physis so that we can understand its relationship to tyche concerning the human good, we
must note that this passage is not the only one in the Ethics that speaks explicitly to the
concerns laid out here. In addition to the passages discussed in the last chapter and those
concerning the force of kairos in the Ethics, let us also consider the following from Bk. III of
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the text, which appears within the discussion of willing and unwilling actions, and
importantly just precedes the beginning of Aristotle's sustained discussion of courage:
But the targeting of the end [tau te/ous] is not self-chosen [authairetos]; instead
one needs to have by nature [phunai, from phuo-, growth, stature] something like
vision [opsin], by which to discern beautifully [krinei kalos] and choose what is
truly good [aletheian agathon airesetai]; this person is good by nature [or is ' {a}
good nature,' euphues], and is naturally beautiful [kalos pephuken] , for with respect
to what is greatest and most beautiful [to gar megiston kai kalliston] , and which is
impossible to get or to learn [mathein] from anyone else, but which one will have
in such a condition [hexei] by nature-to be well [eu] and beautiful [kalos] in this
respect would be the complete and true [end] of nature [he telela kai alethine an
eie euphula]. (EN 1114b7-1114bI4)
Some translators render the first portion of this passage to read that a person needs to be born
with "moral vision" in order to "constitute a good disposition in the full and true meaning of
the term" (Rackham 1999, 151); others overlook the passage altogether in order to maintain
the importance of rational deliberation in human life (cf. Joachim 1985,57-58,107-111). If
we follow the first suggestion and make vision a moral compass, however, then this sight
becomes a matter of impossible correctness, given what I've laid out this far concerning
particular circumstances in which life shows itself; moral vision in this way seeks to asseli
itself over and through all possible situations, paying little attention to what is beautiful, or
kalos. The thrice repetition of the word kalos here, however, draws our attention elsewhere,
back to the relationship between physis and tyche as it arises in the previous passage. For,
while it is tempting to posit a moral vision that contains within it a measure of correctness,
we must wonder what it is that one sees with such eyes, for if this sight is as rare as Aristotle
says, then what must be open to the moral compass is nothing but the failure of those who
lack it. This person, then, would be blessed on account of being able to see "correctly," but a
result of which might call us back to Socrates' experience with Anaxagoras, which brought
about blindness.
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A better way to consider vision (opsin) in this passage is, I think, to situate it as
Aristotle does, which is as the most privileged sense (Meta. 980a22-29). As sight makes
visible many differences, it has a certain dynamis, which is the power that accompanies
aisthesis ("sensation," or "perception"). But what is the dynamis of aisthesis, such that
Aristotle speaks of vision here in a way that links physis to a telos of human life, as a gift that
comes without one's asking?
Heidegger speaks of the dynamis of aisthesis as being "in relation to something as a
power to do something" (1995,168). It is not the production of something, as, we might say,
a moral compass seeks to produce the right measure of acting; rather, "[t]he ergon of
aisthesis [... ] is aletheia-the openness of beings, and in a special manner the perceptibility
of things" (1995,168). That is, aisthesis, which includes vision, is a kind of coming to be at
work, and in so being, pertains to the ability to discern beings as they appear to us. Yet, this
power is not mere force in the sense of doing something; rather, it is the power to be utterly
affected by what appears. In this way, to see is fundamentally receptive. Insofar as aisthesis
is a dynamis, it is "a relationship of that which opens to that which can take part in such
openness, that is, to beings in their particular manner of being, or to their being in general"
(1995, 168). Aisthesis, as a dynamis, then, brings to our attention what is possible to be seen.
And this indeed is powerful, for it suggests more than a mere capacity (the usual translation
of dynamis) as something not-yet-done, but forces us out of ourselves and into a
circumstance, the kairos of beings. Thus when Aristotle says that human beings have
dynamai both for aisthesis and dianoia (EN 1170a15-16), the ways in which these powers
show themselves is precisely in energeia, i.e., in their being at work in a life.
This power-described here as sight-promises to attend to beauty in such a forceful
way that it seems to come from nature itself. For who could ever muster on her own the
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equipment for such a comportment, one that bears witness (I'm thinking of theoria here, as
fundamentally a "witnessing") to beauty, or life, itself? Such sight is impossible to learn
from anyone, Aristotle says, but we may add an addendum: The reason that such vision can't
come from, say, a teacher is because it simply can't be taught. 39 Unless one is already
disposed in a way that projects (literally, "throws forward") one into the open, flinging, as
Whitman says, the gossamer threads of one's life so that they may catch somewhere; unless
one immediately loves Dante, as T.S. Eliot says one must, else the poem will never be
beautiful to its reader; unless one is already claimed, by a question or a task-Unless these
kinds of conditions hold, all will be withdrawn and withheld, oneself from oneself, and
oneself from the world.
What is at issue here is, admittedly, dark and troubling, but also promises great joy.
The odds are slim, Aristotle seems to be saying, for the dynamis of sight to come about, for it
seems to happen by nature in such a way that we must count ourselves most fortunate, having
then a good nature (euphuein), or a beautiful life. But what sort of nature-or nature in what
sense-places the burden of sight on a human being, however rare, knowing that most people
fail to have it? Socrates asks Glaucon in the Republic if he can see himself in the image of
the cave; Glaucon responds that the image is strange, as are the prisoners in the cave. Yet,
Socrates reminds him, these prisoners are like us; Socrates sees himself, and human life, in
the image (Rep. 5l4A-5l5A).
39 One need only think of Socrates' professions in the Apology that he is not a teacher, a point that speaks to
Socrates' relationship to the gods, his admission of ignorance, and the ways in which philosophy is not a
techne, or a subject matter to be learned. For an interesting article concerning Socratic insights in relation
to a possible "indirect ethical inspiration" that Socrates inhabits and gains through his interlocutors, see
Michael Forster's "Socrates' Profession ofignorance" (2007). In this essay Forster traces the primary
source of Socrates' inspiration to Apollo, but this inspiration, on his reading, only comes to be in and
through Socrates' relationship to others, not as a teacher to a student, but insofar as Socrates himself draws
insight from an interlocutor, rather than primarily communicating, or instructing, his interlocutors in
philosophical matters.
159
"For when no one else can understand," Gadamer says, "it seems that the philosopher
is called for" (1998, 9). If this is true, then we can recall Aristotle who, in a discussion of
friendship in Bk. IX of the Ethics, says, "those who give freely to one another for their own
sake are free of complaints (for friendship in accord with arete is of this sort), and one ought
to make a return in accord with one's choice (since this is characteristic of a friend as well as
arete)" (EN 1164a33-1164b2). This free giving, or generosity, never hinges on what a
person thinks she herself deserves, but in her willingness to freely give what is possible to a
friend. In the next sentence, Aristotle intensifies the importance of this generosity, turning
from friendship to philosophy: "[IJt seems to be this way too with those who have shared in
philosophy, for its worth is not measured in money and no honor could be of equal weight
with it, but perhaps it is enough, as with gods and one's parents, to give what is possible"
(EN 1164b3-7; emphasis mine). In other words, what one receives-be it from the gods,
one's parents, friendship, or philosophy-can never be fully repaid or returned, for the gifts
are too large. Thus we must give what is possible, but what is possible is not a matter of, say,
tithing accordingly; rather, as we shall see more fully in the next chapter, what's possible is
persuasive, and perhaps most persuasive of all. Thus, in rendering dynamis as possibility and
also as force, we might say that giving what is possible is what one can do in a certain
manner of being at work, and the ways that this possibility culminates in forcing one into the
open demands that we must give ourselves fully to another, without asking for our "just
desserts" in return.40
40 Aristotle repeats this idea of giving what is possible throughout the end of the Ethics. For example, he
also says, "[F]riendship seeks after what is possible, not what is deserved" (to dynaton gar he philia
epizetel, au to kat' axian, EN 1163b 16). As the greatest of external goods, ta ekta (EN 1169b I0), friends
are necessary for a flourishing life. Countering those who would say that the self-sufficient and blessed
don't need friends, Aristotle here reminds us that a complete life is one that suffices not for oneself alone,
but requires others in order to flourish; we come to be in and through our relations to others. For this
160
We see the difference between those who give themselves freely and those who feel
slighted on account of what they think they deserve most clearly at the end of the Phaedo,
just before Socrates dies. While Socrates bathes himself, Phaedo narrates that he and the
others examined the preceding logos as well as going through their own misfortune
(atychnos), noting how great their misfortune is at the time of Socrates' death. Phaedo says,
"we simply believed that we'd spend the rest of our life just like orphans robbed of their
father" (Phae. l16A). For those present, the death of Socrates is a great misfortune, one that
is utterly personal in a way that speaks not only to the irreplacibility of Socrates, but also to
how the fourteen present at his death stand in relation to their world. Seeing his death as a
great misfortune, they speak of it relationally to their particular fate after his death, for in
likening themselves to soon-to-be orphans, Socrates is limited to his relationship with them
as a father becomes a role for his children. A child, one might say, sees her father as serving
no other role than that of a parent; she cannot see the others ways that he engages in the
world, for everything hinges on his appearance to her. In this way, when those present
bemoan their misfortune, they see Socrates as he is to them, overlooking other significant
ways in which Socrates engages the world.
The contrast between Socrates at this point in the Phaedo and his comrades could not
be clearer. When Socrates drinks the pharmakon, he says, "but I suppose I am allowed to,
and indeed should, pray to the gods that my emigration from here to there may come to be a
fortunate one" (euthyche genesthai, Phae. l17C). Phaedo, upon hearing these words and
witnessing Socrates' actions, covers his face and cries. "[F]or it was not him I bewailed, no,
but my own fortune [alia ten emautou tuxen] ... to be robbed of such a man for a comrade!"
reason, no person alone is self-sufficient, but must thrive with others, emerging in the process to speak to
what's possible. In this way, friendship is surely powerful.
161
(Phaed. 117C). Socrates speaks of good fortune in whatever waits for him; Phaedo speaks of
his misfortune in himself being robbed of Socrates as he stands in relation to him. Phaedo
does know the difference between the two: Here's a man about to die, and Phaedo thinks of
himself, what it is that he (and others) will miss, i.e., their relationship to Socrates. But while
on one hand, Phaedo speaks of the particularity of Socrates (for such a loss is indeed great),
on the other hand, Phaedo does so in relation to himself, and what he'll be missing; he does
not, in this way, recognize Socrates as Socrates in the way that a child might not recognize
her father as more than the role that he plays in her life.
What those present fail to have, at least in the way that Socrates has it, is courage
(andrea), both regarding a particular kairos (especially the circumstances of one's death) and
tyche. Courage is not a kind of fearlessness; rather, it is the ability to take up and engage the
circumstances that present themselves to a person, even if this means giving up the hope of
safety (EN 1115b) or facing one's death. A courageous person, Aristotle says, will "be
frightened" but will endure certain things "in the way one ought and keeping them in
proportion, for the sake of the beautiful, since this is the end that belongs to arete" (EN
1115b9-15). Implicit in this statement is the way in which courage points beyond an
individual toward something beautiful, and thus what it means to be courageous means to act
in such a way that this end is kept in view. Remember too that arete is never simply
something that one has, but instead finds its end in another, beauty (kalos). Thus, courage
demands projecting oneself toward what's beautiful in a given circumstance. As a result,
Aristotle says at the beginning of the Ethics, "something beautiful shines through" those who
truly engage tyche and the kairoi of life (EN 11 OOb31-11 01a12).
Surely we can say that Socrates faces his death courageously and in distinction from
those who face his death with him, but to get back to the matter at hand, i.e., tyche, what's
162
perhaps most odd about the circumstances of Socrates' death insofar as the dialogue of the
Phaedo takes place is the explanation that Phaedo gives for Socrates' extended stay in prison
in the first place: A bit of tyche comes to Socrates, occasioning the dialogue. As Phaedo
explains to Echecrates, before recollecting what happens in the prison, it just so happened
that the return of a ship from Delos, a trip that commemorates Theseus' triumphs, was
delayed by chance (tychosin, Phae. 58B). No execution can take place while the ship is on
its journey; so the ship's return is necessary for Socrates' death to happen. Yet Phaedo
rearticulates the force of tyche as the circumstance that allows for Socrates' prison presence
as happening as a matter of tyche, for the day before Socrates' trial the priest of Apollo
chanced to crown the prow of the vessel, setting it off on its journey (Phae. 58B-58C). Thus,
at the beginning of the dialogue, the logos that Phaedo gives to explain why Socrates spends
so much time in prison after his trial is a thrice repetition of tyche as the circumstance that
affords Socrates his time, as it affords us the occasion of the dialogue itself. Were the ship
not to be kept at bay, we might surmise, the most beautiful dialogue in the history of
philosophy would not have taken place; were the circumstances otherwise, we would not be
called to attend to the occasion of Socrates' death and his philosophical thought in the ways
that we are. Tyche, in this instance, makes possible the rest of the dialogue, for in saying that
it comes to Socrates' aid, we can see how it not only helps Socrates by extending his stay and
occasioning the dialogue, but also how it makes the dialogue possible for us, its readers. And
in saying that a bit of tyche helps Socrates, we are reminded of ta ekta as that which comes to
us without our request in a way that's necessary for human flourishing. These circumstances
are painful to those who are present with Socrates in the prison; however, Socrates, we might
say, is grateful for the time that he has for philosophizing, even in prison.
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In what is arguably the most beautiful passage of the Ethics, Aristotle says,
[D]eath and injuries will be painful to the courageous person, who will undergo them
unwillingly, but will endure them because it is a beautiful thing, and not to do so
would be a shameful thing. And to the extent that one is most excellent [mallon ten
areten] and flourishes [eudaimonesteros], the more will one be pained at death, for to
such a person living is most worthwhile, and this person will be deprived of the
greatest goods [megiston agathon], and this is painful. (EN ll17b7-14)41
Of all of the things to say about this striking passage, most notable for our purposes, perhaps,
is the way in which Aristotle points to a courageous life having its end in something other
than a stingy disposition toward one's life; the telos of courage, as a kind of excellence, is
beauty. Beauty is that for the sake of which a courageous person faces death, though doing
so is most painful to the courageous person, who knows precisely what a flourishing life
looks like. But importantly, the courageous person sees himself not like Phaedo or Crito-
or, god forbid, Apollodorus, whose wailing pervades Socrates' final dialogue-but instead, in
realizing the circumstances that makes life possible in the first place, realizes his true good
fortune in having life as a gift. The courageous person, one might say, is thus implicated in
the movement oflife's excess in such a way that this person recognizes how life itself does
not belong to him any more than arete is a mere having of virtue as something that belongs to
him; rather, the dynamis of this person's life, in coming to him from another, is put at work in
the energeia of this life, which opens a space for life to show itself to this person. Hence
Aristotle's emphasis on vision as a way of witnessing beings; hence Socrates' courage when
facing death; hence a fundamental recognition of the radical contingencies of life such that a
41 The sentiment expressed here, albeit in a different way, is echoed by Clara in Schelling's Clara: "After a
while of quiet contemplation, Clara said: 'Where does that deep devotion to the Earth come from,
independent of all enjoyment we call earthly happiness and consisting of a full appreciation of the
invalidity of this life? Why, if our heart is indeed numb to everything external, and considers it with
pleasure only as a sign and picture of our inner being, why, even if we are firmly convinced that the other
world far exceeds the present one in every way, is there nevertheless the sense that it's hard to part from
this Earth, and if we don't have a secret horror of this parting for ourselves, then we have it for others?'"
(2002,76)
164
fortunate person recognizes the ways in which life might be otherwise, or not be at all; hence
Aristotle's insistence on beauty as that toward which arete aims, something that exceeds the
will of a solitary individual; hence the force of tyche and kairos as what shows us the
possibilities of life. Hence, as Emerson says in "The Over-Soul," a human being is "a stream
whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence" (2001,
163).
Hence we are in danger of losing the question that orients this chapter, for we can see
the risks involved in gathering together the threads of it, for the relationship between tyche
and physis as cryptically articulated by Aristotle at the end of the Ethics demands a certain
attunement to the radical contingency of a human life, knowing that it can always be
otherwise. But if we're attentive, then we may see how something is beginning to
recommend itself to us regarding this relationship: We are beginning to understand the
question at hand, i.e., the emergence of human life as it pertains to tyche when thinking of
physis insofar as articulating this relationship demands a courageous comportment in and to
the world, or toward beings. Neither natural in the sense of a rock nor divine in the ways of
the gods, the emergence of human life tugs at both ends, pointing beyond itself in the
moment in which we are returned to ourselves. For this reason, episteme offers an
insufficient account of human life, for in only speaking to what is, it can't truly speak of
physis, which demands an apprehension of beings not in stasis, but in movement and all that
it entails, from dynamis to energeia. Thus, when speaking of tyche, we are already called to
attention in how things emerge for us in a way that is not removed from an inquiry into
nature, but offers a place to begin. It is, in short, the beginning of wonder, which (as I noted
in chapter two) is the proper element of tyche. Or, as Heidegger says in his "Postscript to
'What is Metaphysics?'"
165
Of all beings, only the human being, called upon by the voice of being [the origin of
which remains unknown, we might concur with Emerson], experiences the wonder of
all wonders: that beings are. The being that is thus called in its essence into the truth
of being is for this reason always attuned in an essential manner. The lucid courage
for essential anxiety assures us the enigmatic possibility of experiencing being. For
close by essential anxiety as the horror of the abyss dwells awe. Awe clears and
cherishes that locality of the human essence within which humans remain at home in
that which endures. (1998,234)
Yet, we might add, such a home never simply is more than it becomes the place where
human life resides, in its very movement. That which endures, if we can recall the stability
of a continuous life emergent through energeia, is that which constantly changes. In
attending to this movement, then-one in which it remains an open possibility for us to gaze
on beings themselves, as the perpetual unfolding ofphysis-we stand in wonder. Of course,
such is also the movement of philosophy, from its beginnings to its end as a deeper
appreciation of its origins.
The thoughts above are neither meant to be fancy nor unfairly unclear. In case they
are, however, let me rearticulate the heart of the relationship between tyche and physis,
particularly at the end of the Ethics, as follows: Tyche pertains to that which can be
otherwise, and in so doing, pertains to human life. As we saw in the Physics, tyche arises as
a matter for philosophical thought within a discussion ofphysis because tyche is one way in
which things appear to us. Insofar as tyche speaks to what's possible in human life, these
things must pertain to thinking and choice-two human characteristics that speak to actions
and occasions about things that can be otherwise. Physis, then, allows for this opening to
appear in such a way that human life emerges from a discussion of nature (or beings, as
Heidegger say) such that something can appear to us in its (and our) emergence. One way in
which tyche is spoken of by Aristotle is in relation to that which is kata symbebekos, which
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means precisely that-relationality. Thus we can see how human life is utterly relational,
and for these reasons, can never take physis as a mere object for a subject, for it is what both
precedes and propels our inquiry. Thus, in an inquiry into nature we might have the dynamis
to see physis in movement, not stasis.
However, to get to the emergence of human life in an ethical inquiry it was necessary
to see how Aristotle thinks that we already find ourselves situated in such an inquiry. Thus
the discussion of the natural road is a matter of leading and being led as our inquiry
deepened. Such an investigation breaks open traditional conceptions of the goals of
Aristotle's inquiry, which purport to be a kind of episteme of the truth of "nature" in an
overarching teleological scheme. However, in being attentive to the ways in which Aristotle
might have in mind aitia as a sense of logos, we saw how human life must attend to what is
possible for it regarding such an inquiry, and for these reasons we're reminded to look for the
best logos in a given situation, asking if Aristotle, like Socrates, makes a second sailing in an
inquiry into nature. Given that, as I've said, Aristotle insists that we move from that which is
clear to us to that which is clear to itself, we have also seen precisely how difficult it is to
determine what, really, is clear in an inquiry into nature, as we emerge from it in a way that
demands our attention. Thus, when we considered the relationship between tyche and
automaton in Phys. II, I noted the intense language of strangeness and wonder that pervades
this section, for given how one must offer the best logos of something, then we must pay
attention to how people speak of the matter at hand. For this reason, when Aristotle says that
tyche points to a certain way that things appear to us, we should take him seriously as he does
his predecessors, for their logoi give him pause, arresting him in his thought. Thus we saw
tyche emerge for Aristotle as that which can be otherwise, particularly regarding human
affairs. However, given that human beings are never simply removed from physis, even if
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physis becomes a matter for our inquiry, we must then also say that tyche relates to physis in
important ways, perhaps crystallizing in the way we find ourselves in an inquiry into nature
insofar as tyche pertains to that which appears to us. Thus we have the first concrete clue
from the Physics: Tyche belongs to an inquiry into nature, at least insofar as human life
emerges from such an inquiry and is never divorced from it.
Yet, in order to examine what tyche is (particularly given it's fundamental obscurity
and shape-shifting nature), I turned to the Nicomachean Ethics. Doing so opened the door
for an inquiry into physis in another sense, i.e., the emergence of human life within nature to
something particular to it. We were put onto this idea by the seemingly strange emergence of
thinking and choice in the Physics, for why should an inquiry into nature relate to these two
things? They should-and do-precisely because these characteristics help define human
life in a way that already orients us in our inquiries; we are thoughtful beings (hopefully) as
much as we deliberate and choose. But, in thinking as in choice things can always be
otherwise; no possible episteme could encapsulate the truth of human action and life. Thus
we turned to what a logos of particularity might look like, noting that such a logos must
speak in outline. Yet, since the goal of the Ethics, as Aristotle says, is to discuss the matters
in the text such that we might be able to "become good," speak we must, even if our logos
carries within it the possibility of deception.
Thus we saw that the Ethics is an attempt to grapple with the radical contingency of
human life. Speaking of such a matter refuses clarity, for how might one speak of things that
can be otherwise, or not be at all? To assume clarity at base is to assume the validity and
veracity of ep is teme as a blueprint for the truth of human life, a clarity that we, as praxical
beings, must resist. And yet all we might want is clarity, from what we ought to do to what is
right, to the truth of "it all." Aristotle, of course, knows this, and all too well: Such is the
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dilemma of human action insofar as we are thoughtful beings, who do, in fact, make
decisions every minute of every day. Wouldn't it be nice to relieve the burden of human life,
just for a second, and get an answer for anyone of these questions? Certainly. But there is
no relief: the future is unclear; there is no program to tell one what to do; there is no Santa
Claus to say whether one is right or wrong.
Thus we saw the scope of human activity get squeezed, at no times more so than in
the relationship between eudaimonia and a person's life, particularly regarding the ways that
eudaimonia resonates with tyche as that which comes from another. However, we did not
despair. Instead, we got our second clue: Maybe the picture of human life that emerges in
the Ethics is about the fundamental being-at-work of a human being in ways that are self-
sufficient only by virtue of their requiring others (or the watchful eye of a good daimon).
Eudaimonia, we said, is an active attunement, but this activity makes way for receptivity
such that it is, at base, flourishing in a way of opening oneself up to the world. One thing
that helps us interrogate the ways in which we're woven into the world, as we saw, is through
a consideration of ta ekta, which are necessary, Aristotle says, for a flourishing life. Thus we
get a third clue, and the image of human life that Aristotle seems to give us statts to come
into focus: A person is more than the sum of her parts, is thoroughly excessive to herself and
to the world, and, when speaking of arete, importantly has an end outside of herself in a way
that returns her to a life at work. This third clue, then, demands an active receptivity to the
world.
It may have seemed, at this point, that the precious "agency" of human life becomes
too narrow to be believed. If we cannot even flourish on our own, if external goods are
necessary for a human life, and if these things speak to the precarious nature ofsuch a life,
then how is one to act, and what should one do? Before attending to this question, we must
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note that we have already said much that speaks to the character of human life, recalling
Socrates: Each of us is not self-sufficient, but in need of much. To this end, we saw that
self-sufficiency (a good patriotic quality for anyone to have) paradoxically is not self-
sufficient, but requires others. Human beings are political creatures for Aristotle, and the life
of a hermit is no real life at all. Whether we agree or disagree with that statement, what
cannot be stressed enough at this point is clue number four: What the Ethics gives us, in lieu
of a program for becoming good, is an articulation of the ways in which we already stand in
relation to such a question that it is even a concern for us. That is, to ask about the possibility
of becoming good, whatever that might mean, is to be proximate to the matter in the first
place, not unlike the ways in which physis both guides and determines an inquiry into it.
Thus, we must either already in some way be good in order to become good, or the question
will never make sense. Hold onto this clue-it holds a potential key for how one can hear the
end of the Ethics. But more on that in a moment.
In recognizing ways in which theos also plays an important role in the Ethics, we saw
its solicitation with tyche insofar as eudaimonia seems to be the best gift from the gods. In
this discussion we saw how theos resonates with tyche as what makes life possible in a way
that points the work of arete in one's life beyond a solitary life; this person is said to be most
blessed indeed. And yet such a thing is never simply up to us to do (i.e., one never simply
"has" arete but engages the world in such a way that resists maintaining oneself as an
isolated individual in the world). If it were, then tyche would not be a big deal for Aristotle,
but as he says throughout the text, one can never truly say that a person who suffers terrible
misfortunes can be said to flourish; such a state is simply too much to ask for one person
alone. Thus clue number five: By calling us to attend to the ways in which other people
suffer, Aristotle demands at base a generosity toward others.
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We then considered the ways in which those who are most fortunate pass their lives
most continuously, not least. Such continuity, as we saw, is more lasting than episteme, for it
speaks to how energeia is a persistent activity of human life. Such an activity demands that
life be constantly at work, either as it relates to arete as having its end in another, or as it
relates to those who are blessed. We saw that the reason for such continuity hinges on a kind
of mindfulness, or unforgetting, which speaks to the ways in which a person is called to the
movement of truth, or truth as a movement. And so we have the sixth clue: a life at work is
more continuous and stable than even episteme.
This life at work, however, always acts (or speaks) in a certain way, and thus we
turned to the importance of kairos for Aristotle, for kairos designates both the particular
circumstances in which a person acts and the force of possibility concerning philosophical
questioning. For not only does one act in a given circumstance, but one is able to affirm
one's possibility through acting in a certain way within a given horizon. We saw, then, the
troubles with offering a logos of particulars, but we also saw the ways in which kairos relates
to tyche insofar as both speak to what's possible for human life. And one thing that's
possible, we noted, is the untimely circumstance of philosophy that emerges through a
thinking together of kairos and tyche. Such a discussion led us to consider the "opportune
moment" as an impetus to see the ways in which we're already claimed by philosophical
questions such that they remain open to us in importantly transformative ways. Hence the
seventh clue: Attentiveness to kairos and tyche demands a philosophical attunement that
leaves open possibility while at the same time imploring that we recognize how we are
always, in some way, exerting our possibility through the interplay between dynamis and
energeia in responding to kairos or tyche.
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At this point, we can step back and witness the lively interplay among the ways that
these concerns emerge in Aristotle's texts, but as I said, the fourth clue above might hold the
key in thinking through the relationship between tyche and physis as Aristotle does at the end
of the Ethics: We must already stand in relation to a question such that it has, in some ways,
already transformed us, or the nature of our discussion. And yet this "already" is not a
simply question of priority; rather, it projects us into the open with the hopes that we might
be able to see something in its appearance. Thus, in being an "already" it also holds within it
possibility in a dynamic sense. So, what comes from physis, Aristotle says, is not up to us;
this is because we emerge/rom it in a continual movement of change. This change is not
locomotion, simple movement from one place to another; rather, as Walter Brogan says,
"metabole as change in the sense of a sudden turning [is] a transition from something to
something. This involves a drawing away and projecting beyond" (2005, 36). For these
reasons, Brogan says, change is understood as "a kind of movement and therefore a kind of
continuity, but a continuity that has rupture belonging to its very core" (2005, 36). A leaf
changes color; a banana gains its spots; things contain within them what they are not. But
this privation (steiresis) belongs to a being in a meaningful way, never simply as absence.
Rather, as we began to see through the interplay between dynamis and energeia, the dynamis
of a being finds its home in the work of the being, and vice-versa: a being at work announces
its possibilities as well. Or, to put it as I did a moment ago, one must already stand in
relation to something in order to seek it.
To put it else-wise, we might say, from the standpoint of tyche, as Pascal does
(though he is surely not speaking of chance): "Tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m'avais
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trouve" (1998,331).42 Or, as Pascal Massie does, "[t]he secret of chance is that it holds no
secret" (2003, 25); it is one of the many ways in which things appear to us. But, in so being,
tyche remains, as Aristotle says, fundamentally unclear. Massie says, however, that chance
"refers to an end as what is in excess of the event" (2003, 25), in away, I submit, that we are
always in excess of ourselves. Or we might put it as Derrida does: "Neither subjectum nor
objectum-Dasein is itself thrown, originally abandoned to fall and decline or, we could say,
to chance (Ver/allen). Dasein's chances are, in the first place and also, its falls. And they are
always mine, mes chances, each time related to the relation to itself, to a Jemeiningkeit, a
mineness (an 'in each case mine') that does not come down to a relation to an ego or an I
(lch, moi)" (1984, 9). This stance occurs because "the sense of the fall in general [... ] is
conceivable solely in the situation and places of space of finitude, within the multiple
relations to the multiplicity of elements" (1984, 8-9).
Holding these thoughts together, then, we might make the following statement,
however premature it may be: In considering the relationship between tyche and physis, we
must remain open to the possibility of both to give us insight into beings. An action or
thought I did not intend nonetheless opens me to something importantly transformative,
something that takes me outside of myself in returning me to myself, however "other" that
self is to which I return. And the world to which I return is other as well. Or, as Heidegger
says,
[t]he way life (to indicate it formally) is something whose 'other' is in every case its
'other," as its world-that is the way it is itself something that 'is' in the mode of
possessing the tendency to 'be' in the actualization of the possession of 'self'
(possession of self: formally in the basic modes of appropriation and becoming lost).
Here the 'self' does not express a specifically and obtrusively 'egoistic' relational
direction of this possessing, nor is it to be understood as a sort of self-observation or
42 "You would not look for me if you had not found me" (translation mine; from Pierre Hadot's Etudes de
Philosophie Ancienne (1998).
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reflectedness. On the contrary, the self-possession and Being are determined in each
case, according to their own sense, out of the concrete situation, i.e., from the lived
life-world. (2001, 129)
We might hear that which is kata symbebekos at work in this passage insofar as it denotes
one way of speaking of the relationality between a person and her world. And one way of
speaking of this, as I've noted, is through a consideration of tyche as making possible a
person's life, which, while always remaining her own, points her outward, beyond herself, at
every turn. Thus, when Heidegger says that the way of life always appears to a person as "its
other," as its world, then we can maybe see how tyche speaks precisely ofa being's tendency
to be, always in relation to, and emergent from, everything else.
At this point, however, I must come clean with some thoughts I've had for quite a
while. Some may find, in our contemporary world, nothing but despair, a boredom that
arrests people daily, and an unforgiving facticity that speaks only of what merely is, not what
can be. Such a stance, however, is thoroughly anathema to the Greeks, whose notorious
optimism (with emphasis on the "op-" as it relates to sight in the ways I've discussed)
chastises self-approving narcissism. Whereas we often tend to think that nothing is possible,
the Greeks find that nearly everything is; whereas we might mourn Oedipus, he concludes
that all is well; whereas those present at Socrates' death feel sorry for themselves, Socrates
intimates that with a little luck he'll continue on his way; whereas we look for truth in the
facts of the matter in order to isolate determinate causes, Aristotle encourages us to see where
it is that we find ourselves; whereas we have inherited Descartes, we need to remember the
Greeks.
And so it may be that the ultimate relationship between tyche and physis may not
matter in the ways that we tend to think it ought, i.e., as an assertion that can be either proved
or refuted. For what has opened for us instead is a way in which we are constantly asked to
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receive Aristotle's logos, hearing what one hears in the echo that precedes it. The world is
full, Aristotle tells us, whether from physis, tyche, or rheas, and the sign of one who is truly
fortunate knows this above all else.
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CHAPTER VI
TYCHE AND THE INQUIRY INTO POIETIC POSSIBILITY
Since man's life is nothing but a bit of action at a distance,
A bit of foam shining inside a glass;
Since trees are nothing but moving trees;
Nothing but chairs and tables in perpetual motion;
Since we ourselves are nothing but beings
(As the godhead itself is nothing but God);
Now that we do not speak solely to be heard
But so that others may speak
And the echo precede the voice that produces it;
Since we do not even have the consolation of a chaos
In the garden that yawns and fills with air,
A puzzle that we must solve before our death
So that we may nonchalantly resuscitate later on
When we have led women to excess;
Since there is also a heaven in hell,
Permit me to propose a few things:
I wish to make a noise with my feet
I want my soul to find its proper body.
-Nicanor Parra
An exemplary feature of human life that speaks to "what's possible" is poiesis.
Mainly dormant throughout our work thus far (though noted at important points) is the role of
yet another way that things come into being-i.e., by poiesis or techne.43 We briefly saw
how these words emerge in the Physics as well as in the Nicomachean Ethics, and having
mainly bracketed their importance for Aristotle until this point, it is now safe to say that
43 Aristotle often speaks ofpoiesis and techne together; however, they maintain as many differences as
similarities, so for my purposes, I have narrowed the scope ofthe discussion to focus on poiesis, not only
because this word is at the heart of Aristotle's Poetics but because it helps marks a boundary for our
discussion conceming "making" in a broad sense but also in an important narrow sense, as "poetry."
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poiesis, both broadly construed as "making" or "doing" and more narrowly as "poetry,"
intertwines with tyche in speaking to human possibility, for poiesis is neither necessary nor
always; rather, a space (or many spaces) open up for human creativity when bringing
something into being such that something shows itself to us through its genesis. Such a
bringing into being, however, is always twofold, requiring not just a positive moment of
creation, but also the ability to be affected in multitude ways by what comes into being;
hence poiein is never sheer productivity for the Greeks containing only positive content, but
also meets paskein, which means "to be affected by." The interplay between the two, like
that between dynamis and energeia, as we saw, is thus constitutive of what it means to bring
something into being such that poiesis retains, at its core, the struggle between emergence
and submergence, activity and passivity, and the ways in which such a struggle helps bring
beings into the open.44
Gadamer says, "everything we see stands there before us and addresses us directly as
ifit showed us ourselves" (1989, 11). This statement beautifully captures the essence of
poiesis as it emerges in tragedy for Aristotle, for tragedy is "an imitation [mimesis], not of
44 In the Metaphysics, Aristotle characterizes this struggle as one between acting and being acted upon,
which are the differences and relations between poiein and paskein (Meta. 1046a20ff.). He says that in one
sense, that which acts and that which is acted upon (what I have called here "activity" and "passivity") is
the same; poiesis entails steiresis (privation) in order to bring something about. However, they maintain
differences insofar as the thing acted upon, or that which is able to be affected (relating to paskein), has
within it a certain source (arche), which denotes possibility as dynamis insofar as something can happen to
or come about from it.
Perhaps a helpful way to think about the relationship between poiein and paskein is to consider the
etymology of the word paskein since the Greeks, into our contemporary usage: Paskein most originally
means "to be affected by," and is related to the Greek word pathos, used to signify the process of
undergoing, enduring, or suffering. In Latin, the word became passeo, retaining its affectivity when
considering, for example, the "passions" of Christ, or even the "passions" of the soul for Descartes. In
English, however, it is common parlance to speak of "having a passion for" something, as if this passion is
something that someone does (e.g., playa musical instrument, paint, work on puzzles). Our contemporary
usage loses the primacy of affectivity, however, for insofar as one is passionate, one is radically receptive;
a misnomer occurs if one thinks of affectivity solely as something that one does. In this way, paskein
relates to dynamis as a power or capacity to be affected or undergo change (Meta. 1046a20-35). (For more
on this, see also Heidegger 1995, 64-72,178-180.)
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human beings, but of actions [praxeos] and of life [biou]" (Poet. 1450a17). In being such an
imitation, we are asked to see what we see in its unfolding, not as it speaks solely to human
life, but how it is that life itself shows something to us in our witnessing of it. For this
reason, according to Aristotle, tragedy can guide one's soul (psychagogei) through
recognizing the interplay among mythos, reversals of fortune, and recognitions (anagnorisis)
that present themselves to us through witnessing the mimesis of life (Poet. 1450a34-35).
Tragedy is one facet ofpoiesis. Differentiated from praxis as that which has its end
in itself (e.g., the action is the thing done, as we saw in the Ethics), poiesis importantly has its
end in another (tes men gar poieseos heteron to telos, EN 1140a14). In speaking of the
similarities between praxis and poiesis in the Ethics, Aristotle says that both pertain to things
that are capable of being otherwise; both require hexeis (active conditions); both are
particularly human events. However, poiein pertains to things that are in the process of
coming into being, and to participate in this activity is "also to consider how something
capable of being or not being, and of which the source is in the one who makes it and not in
the thing that is made, may come into being" (EN 1140all-14). Thus, the poet brings a poem
into being and is the source, but only in a certain way, of the poem. The poem too extends
beyond an individual poet, who might even come to completion in the poem. (However, this
is but half the story, for as we have seen, poiesis also speaks to ways in which a person is
constituted by something else, maybe even the possibility of a poem in the first place for a
poet.) Poiesis, thus, doesn't speak to what's necessary (and so opposes episteme), but instead
to what can be otherwise. To this end, Aristotle says that techne loves tyche, and tyche
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techne, for both pertain to things that can be otherwise (EN l140al 0-16); both pertain to
what's possible.45
Moreover, what it means to make something is excessive to the thing itself in a way
that demands, e.g., an audience for a drama, a viewer for a painting, and a hearer for music.
Not a solitary event, poiesis emerges for Aristotle as something that points beyond itself,
addressing us in a way that makes the acts of life appear to another. Poiesis also speaks to
the maker, or the poet, for this person carries a heavy burden, one that separates a world of
stasis from a world of change, for the task of the poet is to say what might come to be, not to
report what has already passed. In this way, Aristotle says, poiesis is more philosophical than
history, for while the historian speaks of what has passed, the poet speaks to what is possible,
and "the possible is persuasive" (Poet. 1451 b16-17). The difference, to put it crudely, is
between death and life, for life attends to possibility, and death to what has come to pass. In
resonating with life, then, poiesis finds its natural ally with tyche, for both pertain to what can
be otherwise. And in fact, in most Greek tragedies we learn that reversals of fortune can
truly devastate a life to the point where, as we saw Aristotle say of Priam, one cannot be said
to flourish if suffering terrible fortunes.
Given that my work thus far in this manuscript insists on tyche as it speaks to
possibility fundamentally and in the first place, in this chapter I tum explicitly to poiesis to
consider one way in which this possibility shows itself. Beginning with the relationship
between eros and harmony in Plato's Symposium, I tum to poiesis in Heidegger as it
45 In this passage from the Ethics, Aristotle equivocates ofpoiesis and techne, seeming to use them to speak
of the same thing. The reason for such an elision at this point may be because they share characteristics of
each other insofar as both designate a source that has its end in another and pertain to that which can be
otherwise or not be at all. These two ways of speaking about an excessive end, then, align with each other
against praxis as action that contains its own end within it in the thing done, not in the activity of "making"
in the sense of bringing something into being.
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maintains a persistent tension between earth and world in "The Origin ofa Work of Art." I
then examine Kristeva's articulation of the relationship between the symbolic and semiotic in
order to think about the experience of a human life as fundmentally poetic. Finally, I look at
Aristotle's Poetics in order to situate rhythm and mimesis as they speak to what's possible in
human life concerning poiesis.
Section I
Plato's Symposium: Eros and Harmonia
In Plato's Symposium, the physician Eryximachus, having advised the hiccupping
Aristophanes how to cure his sudden convulsions and offering to praise love in his place
while he recovers, speaks of Eros on account of his interest in health and medicine
(hiatrikes), saying that their ancestor, Aesclepius (the god tolofwhom Socrates speaks his
last words in the Phaedo), created the episteme (knowledge) of health based his ability to
instill love between opposites (Sym. l86e). Under Aesclepius' guidance or oversight,
according to Eryximachus, a talented physician knows how to bring about Eros in a body in
terms of what is good (kalon) for the body in relation to preexisting oppositions and strife
within that body; the techne (craft, or productive knowledge) of medicine is thus an episteme
of the activites of Eros. Because Aesclepius' particular expertise lies in being able to bring
about Eros from prior oppositions (and we will see the importance of this act as it concerns
poiesis itself, wherein the end of an action differs from and is outside the thing in question),
he is thus the god who harmonizes contraries into something else, whether it be in athletics,
agriculture, or music (Sym. l87a).
Citing the errors of Heraclitus, Eryximachus explains that harmony (harmonia)
neither consists in opposition nor results from things being in opposition but instead is
created in the musical arts (musikes technes) as concord (symphonia), which itselfis a kind of
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agreement (homologia, or "saying the same"). Strictly speaking, that which is homologia is
anathema to opposites themselves, which are alogia and thus not in harmony. However, like
medicine, music brings46 opposites into agreement by engendering love and harmony among
them; "music is a knowledge [episteme] of the activities of Eros with regard to harmony and
rhythm [rhythmos]" (Sym. 187c).
Not only musical and medicinal matters themselves, however, bring clarity to the
ability of Eros to harmonize and bring into agreement opposite matters or concerns, for Eros
also works through rhythm and harmony in other human affairs. According to Eryximachus,
rhythm and harmony are at work in poiesis in the composition of melodies, meter, and verse,
as well as in musical performances and education. Discerning ways in which these things
ought to come into being in view of the good that's at stake in these matters is difficult, and
one must recognize two kinds of love at work in poetic compositions: Eros, which shows
itself as defendable in human creations and through our desire points us outside ourselves to
worthy people around us (who are often praised in created verses), and another that seems
like Eros but is instead a ruse, seducing human beings to aspire impossibly to the divine
itself. Eryximachus thus says: "in music, in medicine, and in every other activity both
human and divine, one should be as attentive as possible regarding each of these kinds of
Love" (Sym. 188a), for true Eros realizes and brings about harmony in human affairs, and we
human beings, in turn, ought to defend Eros in light ofphilia with the gods; entertaining the
other, we might infer, brings about hubris in our inability to recognize our human place.
In Eryximachus' speech, then, Eros and Aesclepius are both at work and concern
each other, for it is Aesclepius who brings harmony and love between opposites in medicine,
music, and other human endeavors, and Eros emerges both as that which guarantees the
46 Literally: "carries across or through" (from diaphero-).
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relationship between human beings and the gods and as that which shows itself poietically in
human life. When Aristophanes recovers from his hiccups at the end of Eryximachus' praise
of Eros, he wonders aloud if the kind of Eros in his body desired the noises and tickling that
he endured, and Eryximachus scolds him: "watch what you're doing! Though you're
supposed to be giving a speech, you're making jokes, and forcing me to be on my guard
against your speech in case you say something funny" (Sym. 189b); Aristophanes thus
rescinds his musing and proceeds with his own speech.
Though Aristophanes jests (or, as an overly-sensitive Eryximachus interprets his
response), Eryximachus' speech opens the relationship between Eros and Aesc1epius, or love
and health, as it concerns human affairs in general and poiesis in particular. With his speech
in mind, the centrality and importance of rhythm and harmony in poiesis as a human activity
that points beyond itself as a reminder of what it is to be human takes center stage. In order
to investigate how rhythm and harmony play themselves out in relation to love and health in
human life, I tum to Heidegger, whose insistance on the interplay between "earth" and
"world" in "The Origin of a Work of Art" speaks to a continuous strife at the heart ofpoiesis;
Julia Kristeva, who situates rhythm as the unarticulated undulation driving human life, which
grounds any subsequent articulation; and Aristotle, who, in his Poetics, opens his discussion
ofpoiesis and mimesis through rhythmos. All do so, I submit, with catharsis-itselfa kind of
health and love-in view. But let's begin with a poem from Heidegger:
When the cowbells keep tinkling from
the slopes of the mountain valley
where the herds wander slowly...
The poetic character of thinking is
still veiled over.
Where it shows itself, it is for a
long time like the utopism of
a half-poetic intellect.
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But poetry that thinks is in truth
the topology of Being.
This topology tells Being the
whereabouts of its actual
presence. (Heidegger 1971, 12)
Exploring the topology of Being helps us understand the topology of poetry and, implicitly,
the poetic character of thinking. For Heidegger, the result, in "The Origin of the Work of
Art," is the struggle between earth and world in the advent of truth (aletheia) as
unconcealment concerning beings, and the ability (or necessity) of art, or poetry, to open
such a world. In this respect, we might note the place-character of Being, which rings at the
heart of what a topology is: an account ofplace (topos)-in this case, of beings. For
Kristeva, the result of this topologizing is the poetic subject herself, both as a speaking
subject and in a work of art, like poetry. Emerging dialectically between the semiotic and the
symbolic aspects of a poetic life, her topology is thus one that is always in flux, emphasizing
the practice of a speaking subject or text more than its historical character. What I offer here
is a kind of topography, then-a writing of the place in which these thoughts emerge, and a
place from which to discuss the dialogue that may emerge between Heidegger and Kristeva
through Aristotle's Poetics. I will end with a Charles Simic poem that will encourage us to
think the space of beings in their emergent poetic character.
Section II
Heidegger's Topology: Earth and World
"In the nearness of the work [of art]," Heidegger tells us, "we were suddenly
somewhere else than we usually tend to be" (1993, 161). Heidegger says this in reference to
the speaking character of Van Gogh's painting of the peasant shoes, but we can think through
this thought as it is provoked by the last phrase ofHeidegger's poem: How does the
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topology of art (or, as he will finally say, poetry) point us to the whereabouts of Being, and
what is being set forth in a work of art such that Being opens itself to us? We get a clue in
the penultimate stanza of Heidegger' s poem, and that clue relates a kind of thinking poetry to
Being, such that something comes to shine forth, or be present, in the very experience of art
and poetry. In allowing Being to come to be, we might say, poetry uproots us from our
ordinary experience, opening a world in which the horizon of Being is allowed to be.
"All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of beings, is as such, in
essence, poetry," Heidegger writes at the end of his essay, for poetry, broadly construed, is
the "setting-itself-into-work of truth" (1993, 197). Translating aletheia as "unconcealment"
and not as truth qua correctness, Heidegger insists that the work of poetry, or of art,
maintains no usual causal connection between art and artist, or artwork and its recipient;
rather, the transportation of the recipient of art to the world of the work of art itself speaks to
the essence of poetry, we might say, in a Greek sense: Broadly construed as "making,"
poeisis importantly maintains the overfullness of Being, for to make something is to let that
thing come to be more than it otherwise would be. The key to understandingpoiesis in this
sense is that for something to be poietic, the end must be outside of itself; we might, crudely,
say that it must be excessive in relation to its materials (paint, words, wood, etc.). As we
shall see in turning to Kristeva, this means-regarding poetry in its more specific, linguistical
sense-that the sum of poetry is more than its grammatical parts, more than how words are
arranged on a page, maybe even more than what they hope to communicate. This poietic
resonance must be kept in mind in working through Heidegger's thought, for the poet/artist
does in fact make something, but the work of art exceeds the material proper to the poet.
(Heidegger explains this at length in the first part of the essay, wherein he says that the
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painter does not, properly speaking, use colors from a palette, but instead lets the colors come
into being rather than using them up.)
Heidegger says, "Projective saying is poetry: the saying of world and earth, the
saying of the arena of their strife and thus of the place of all nearness and remoteness of the
gods. Poetry is the saying of the unconcealment of beings" (1993, 198). This "projective
saying," or naming, brings beings to "word and to appearance" (1993, 198), letting them
shine forth not through a medium or the use of words (or paint, or stone), but through the
horizon erected between earth and world, between the strife and harmony of their interplay.
We might here think the topology of Being as it arrives for us, always too early and too late,
in the consideration of the work of art, both as it works on us and sets itself-and thus
beings-forth into the world.
But whose world, or which, comes into being in a work of art? Heidegger's
discussion of the relationship between earth and world in art emerges through an example of
a Greek temple, which itself "portrays nothing" (1993,167). And yet, the temple is
extremely vibrant, and works: It both shows what it is and is not; it shows the "invisible
space of air;" it cements itself on the ground; it surges, commands, rages. The temple does
all of this. Heidegger reminds us that "[t]he Greeks early called this emerging and rising in
itself and in all things physis" (1993, 168); Heidegger calls it "earth." Earth, like physis, is
not (simply) matter, not an underlying hypokaimenon, or substance, not the planet or ground
in any usual sense; it is not, as Heidegger makes clear in the first part of this essay, any mere
thing. Rather, "Earth is that whence the arising brings back and shelters everything that
arises as such. In the things that arise, earth occurs essentially as the sheltering agent" (1993,
168).
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As a sheltering agent, "earth" points us to something that must be sheltered, or at
least says that there is something to shelter. (This sheltering may not be unlike the veil of
which Heidegger speaks in his poem, wherein "the poetic character of thinking is still veiled
over," if we understand a veil also as sheltering thinking, presuming that thinking requires
such a sheltering from its own poetic character.) Heidegger says that earth "shelters
everything that arises as such," and thus is not, precisely speaking, any thing. We may
consider the temple: The temple is a temple insofar as it works to house the gods, and insofar
as people find themselves in relation to it in this way. The very work of the temple allows for
the presence of the gods, and to be a work thus means that a world gets set up: "To be a
work means to set up a world," Heidegger says, but then asks, "what is it to be a world?"
(1993,170)
Heidegger responds: "The world worlds" (1993, 170). Just as we mistakenly project
properties onto subjects, so too do we mistake the world that is active and does something:
World never stands before us, as an object, as something that can be seen. Yet, we are
subject to the wor1d~and only we human beings understand ourselves as having or
inhabiting a wor1d~nonetheless, and so we get another clue in thinking through the work of
art: To be work, there is a setting up of a world. This is what work does (think of art work
not just as the thing that it is, but also as it continues to work~recall the double gesture of
the genitive "work of art" in both of these senses); it lets the world world. In the example of
the temple, it is the temple itself which allows for its material to shine forth and become what
they are for the very first time: rocks come to be rocks, colors glow, and all of this happens
within the sheltering of the earth, or physis. Thus a transformation from our previous
(mis)conceptions of how art~or artwork~works sets free the space of a world that comes
into being.
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Effortless and untiring, earth thus comes to be the horizon in which we ground
ourselves, for in addition to a work of art setting up a world, the work also sets forth the
earth. Hence we are given something within a world-the work lets the earth be an earth. As
physis, earth thus reveals to us something about our nature in its setting forth a world as, we
might say, a kind of reminder of the horizon in which we find ourselves when experiencing a
work of art, a horizon that transports us importantly from where we usually find ourselves.
As transformative, the world of a work of art explodes the horizon of earth, resisting
objectification: It [the world] is the "every-nonobjective to which we are subject as long as
the paths of birth and earth, blessing and curse keep us transported into Being" (1993, 170).
As such, world is historical, against the spontaneity that is earth. The struggle between the
two, even as they show themselves in concert, results in strife:
The world grounds itself on the earth, and earth juts through world. Yet the relation
between world and earth does not wither away into the empty unity of opposites
unconcerned with one another. The world, in resting upon the earth, strives to
surmount it. As self-opening it cannot endure anything closed. The earth, however,
as sheltering and concealing, tends always to draw the world into itself and keep it
there. (1993, 174)
Through this tension and interplay, according to Heidegger, the essential natures of world
and earth come to be, each necessitating each other; neither can dispense with the other.
Because of this, the work of art instigates this strife so that it can remain strife: World is
historical, earth spontaneous. World clears paths, earth rises up as self-closing (1993, 180).
World clears, earth conceals: "Setting up a world and setting forth the earth, the work is the
instigation of the strife in which the unconcealment of beings as a whole, or truth, is won"
(1993, 180).
For Heidegger, then, the truth of poetry shows itself in letting this strife come to light
and work. Through the interplay of earth and world, we are transported, as I've said, from
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where we otherwise tend to be, for it is through the work of language and art that a world
opens to us, showing something to us about who and where we are, clearing a space for it to
work on us, for us to work in it. It is, simply put, pure possibility, which Aristotle tells us in
his Poetics, is most persuasive of all. In other words, it is a true topology: an account, or
logos, of the place of beings in their origin, or springing-forth, into the world.
Section III
Kristeva's Topology: The Semiotic and Symbolic
"[PJoetry is a practice of the speaking subject," Kristeva writes, "consequently
implying a dialectic between limits, both signified and signifying, and the setting of a pre-
and translogical rhythm solely within this limit" (1980, 25). As such a practice, it, like
Heidegger's interplay of earth and world in a work of art, is dynamic, but Kristeva's
emphasis is on the speaking subject more than-or at least in relation to-a work of art. For
her, Heidegger "retains currency ... because of his attentiveness to language and 'poetic
language' as an opening up of beings; as an openness that is checked but nonetheless occurs;
as a struggle between world and earth; artistic creations are all conceived in the image of
poetic language where the 'Being' of 'beings' is fulfilled and on which, as a consequence,
'History' is grounded" (1980, 25). Let us note a kinship with Heidegger, then, insofar as
poetry for both is a struggle between and within limitations of two different kinds of
dialectic: for Heidegger, the dialectic occurs within a work of art as the struggle between
earth and world; for Kristeva, the dialectic occurs most importantly and broadly within the
speaking subject herself through the interplay of the semiotic and symbolic aspects of one's
life.
And so we shift our discourse to thinking about poetry in Heidegger as it is in a work
of art already in relation to the interplay between Being and beings, to poetry as it is foremost
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a practice of the speaking subject for Kristeva and is not primarily historical, as Kristeva
thinks it is for Heidegger, but is experiential. It is within this new discourse that the structure
of earth and world might help us think of a poetic subject, both in poetry broadly construed as
making, and in its more precise sense in, say, a poem.
With broad strokes we thus begin our topology. First we place (since topologies are
about places) earth by the semiotic, and world by the symbolic in shifting our speech. Let us
recall the characteristics of earth: disruptive, sheltering, penetrating, spontaneous, concealed.
Here is what Kristeva says regarding the semiotic chora in Revolution and Poetic Language,
noting that it underscores our becoming meaningful speaking beings:
The chora, as ruptures and articulations (rhythm), precedes evidence, verisimilitude,
spatiality, and temporality. Our discourse-all discourse-moves with and against
the chora in the sense that it simultaneously depends upon and refuses it. Although
the chora can be designated and regulated, it can never be definitively posited: as
a result, one can situate the chora and, if necessary, lend it a topology, but one can
never give it axiomatic form. (1984, 26)
Like earth in Heidegger, one can never give chora (a term borrowed from Plato's Timaeus)
axiomatic form but can assume a topology for it because chora, in Kristeva's text, is akin to
the drives (and may be derivative from them): Ever present as rhythm and rupture, it is a
disruptive "ground" through which we come to inhabit the symbolic world of language. It is
also that which guarantees entrance to the symbolic realm, for without the semiotic chora
(which, by itself, is nothing), language would not speak, we might say, from any place. In
contrast to the world of symbols that guide and determine our lives as speaking beings,
Kristeva deems the chora "semiotic," i.e., "the operation that logically and chronologically
precedes the establishment of the symbolic and its subject" (1984, 41). As such, it has no
fixed time, save for preceding the genesis of the subject. Pointing to a subject coming into
being from unarticulable desires, the semiotic always stands in relation to the symbolic both
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as that which makes the symbolic possible (i.e., it is that which allows our understanding of
ourselves as acting agents in the world to emerge), and as that which reminds us that our self-
understanding in the symbolic realm, the realm of language and signs, is contigent upon a
network of heterogeneous and disparate influences, from the biological to the social (1984,
41).
Much like day and night hang together and come to be in relation to each other, the
semiotic and the symbolic, according to Kristeva, hang together and only really are in and
through each other. What interests Kristeva most in this work-before she explicitly turns to
poetic language and literature, as we shall do in a moment-is how a person becomes who
she is in, we might say, a way that mimics the structure of poetic speech itself.47 Breaking
radically from a stable "I" or Ego that she sees at work in the legacy of modern philosophy
and that we mistakenly (though necessarily) inherit today, Kristeva says that "to the extent
that these two threads (drives and consciousness [or, we might add, the semiotic and the
symbolic]) interweave, the unity ofreason which consciousness sketches out will always be
shattered by the rhythm suggested by drives: repetitive rejection seeps in through 'prosody,'
and so forth, preventing the stasis of One meaning, One myth, One logic" (1984, 148). The
unity of reason, which, we might say, is the supposed hypokaimenon, or underlying thing that
couches and guides the modern solitary subject, ultimately fails to take account of the
shattering effect of rhythm and failure that one experiences as a speaking being in a world of
symbols. Even further: rhythm, which can be pleasurable (1984, 179), is the experience of a
person in the failure of the symbolic realm to guarantee her safety and happiness; its pleasure,
in a purely negative way, functions as that which buoys her asymbolically, reminding her of
47 Though Kristeva might resist this inversion of how we normally take a text to be a mimetic of human
life, she might be sympathetic insofar as, in the end, there really is no difference between how a person
experiences herself in the world and how one experiences a text.
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her place in the symbolic realm because it is the semiotic network that guarantees her
meaning and existence. The chora thus breaks from a simple hypokaimenon by itself being
generated in the process of a subject's becoming, standing in relation to signs and signifiers
as a kind of unground (if! may borrow an important word from Schelling) that allows for the
possibility of becoming a subject.
In an earlier essay, "The Ethics of Linguistics," Kristeva articulates the distinction
between the rhythmic semion and the structure of the symbolic as follows:
On the one hand, then, we have this rhythm; this repetitive sonority, this thrusting
tooth pushing upwards before being capped with the crown of language; this struggle
between word and force gushing with the pain and relief of a desperate delirium; the
repetition of this growth, of this gushing forth around the crown-word, like the earth
completing its revolution around the sun. (1980, 28)
From this passage we may glean that the semiotic is rhythm, repetition, and thrusting within a
burgeoning subject; it is the earth in Heidegger. But against this earth, this rhythmic
rupturing of the poetic subject, is the "ego," which Kristeva says is "situated within the space
of langage, crown, system: no longer rhythm, but sign, word, structure, contract, constraint;"
in other words, it is the symbolic (1980, 29). In being symbolic, it is, we might say, the
world that is set forth in a work of art in Heidegger's thinking, but is not (at least primarily) a
historical world, but is instead the structure of language, symbols, and systems that a
speaking subject comes to inhabit. (Loosely, the poetic subject inhabits the world of
language, whereas poetry, in Heidegger, sets language forth into the world as language.)
For Kristeva, the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic-especially
concerning rhythm as semiotic-is also evident in poetic language in a narrow sense, for it is
poetic language that "puts the subject in process/on trial through a network of marks and
semiotic facilitations" (1984, 58). In a technical sense, this process is evident in two
components of a poetic work, the "genotext" and the "phenotext." The genotext is parallel to
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the semiotic chora in literature and poetry for it is what organizes a space in which the
subject will be generated; it, like the semiotic chora, is "language's underlying foundation"
(1984, 87); or, as she says in Black Sun, it is the "language beyond language that inserts into
the sign the rhythm and alliterations of semiotic processes" (1989, 97). As such, it comes to
be within language itself, which is the phenotext of literature or poetry. The phenotext aspect
of literature is a structure that "obeys rules of communication and presupposes a subject of
enunciation and an addressee" (1984, 87). The signifying process in literature, then, mimics
the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic in a subject's genesis and is clear
especially in modem poetry and literature, where the breakdown of grammar and punctuation
themselves signify diverse failures of language to symbolize what underlies the subject in
question, i.e., the semiotic chora, rhythm, desire.
Citing Mallarme, Kristeva thus writes: "Following the instinct for rhythms that has
chosen him, the poet does not deny seeing a lack of proportion between the means let loose
and the result" (30). In Powers ofHorror, Kristeva cites Celine, who says that writing
"'involves taking sentences, as I was saying, and having them fly off their handle ... '" (1982,
187). We might say, in other language, that the structure of language itself-with all of its
available breaks, stops, and infinite ellipses-still fails to account for the result of a poetic
work as one that doesn't just "employ" language in a usual sense to signify conceptual
understanding, but that can break down language itself with the result being something else;
the result, insofar as it is "something else," is itself poetry broadly construed, or poiesis.
Mallarme and Celine both know this: the result of poetry and literature is more than the sum
of its grammatical parts. When sentences fly off their handle and the poet knows that the
result of her poiesis is more than words as they're arranged on the page, we know that poiesis
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involves the revolution of language itself in addition to demanding a revolution (literally, a
turning) of one's self-understanding.
Poetry, poetic language, literature, tragedy, art: According to Kristeva, "modern
poetic language goes further than any classical mimesis-whether theatrical or novelistic-
because it attacks not only denotation (the positing of the object) but meaning (the positing of
the enunciating subject) as well" (1984, 58). Modern poetic language, in other words,
disrupts even the positing of a unified symbolic structure, a disruption that is evident through
a modern text itself. It also commands the flow ofjouissance into language and allows for
the dissolution ofa unified subject that is implied in pre-1850s literature, a subject that is
both transparent to itself and the world. Particularly modern poetic mimesis dissolves not
only the linguistical structure's commanding role as master (that we've forgotten is in the
first place posited), but also disrupts the very positing of a unified subject.48
It is in this thought that we encounter a difficulty to which we now turn in Aristotle:
If the relationship between the semiotic and the symbolic presuppose each other and come to
be through each other, and if, moreover, the semiotic, which by itself is nothing, oozes into
the symbolic in both our social and literary experiences, then what is the transgression of
48 Because of this, Kristeva often speaks of human beings not as subjects, but as "thetic": always disrupted
and disruptive. And while much can and should be said about how Kristeva thinks of modern poetry in
particular as responses to our peculiarly contemporary experiences of cultural, historical, and individual
abjection, what we need most importantly to note is that rhythm, as semiotic chora, functions within the
symbolic realm as that which both threatens and guarantees the formation of a subject in and through
language. Through the breakdown of language itself in modern poetry and literature (and with, we might
add, the ever-changing definitions of what constitutes a "text" in the first place), the mimesis at the heart of
Kristeva's own text is a question: What is the relationship betweenpoiesis and mimesis regarding a subject
who's on trial, or in process, in poetic language and in the world? Kristeva speaks of mimesis as a
transgression of the thetic (a kind of pre-subject, or a substitute for a knowing Ego) for whom "truth" no
longer has any meaning in relation to linguistical objects but instead refers to semiotic traces (a seme, after
all, is a trace); truth destabilizes our truth-seeking conceptuality. As Kristeva says, "all transgressions of
the thetic are a crossing of the boundary between true and false-maintained, inevitably, by the flow of the
semiotic into the symbolic" (1984, 58).
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which she speaks regarding the very act of mimesis, and how does mimesis come to show
itself most of all in poiesis, something whose end is outside of itself? By turning now to
Aristotle, we will see how rhythmos crystalizes the advent ofpoiesis and helps us understand
the decisive role of mimesis in poetic creation.
Section IV
Aristotle: Rhythm and Mimesis
Kristeva writes that Aristotle "opposed the act ofpoetic purification," which is an
impure (and perhaps impossible) process that pretends to ignore, cleanse, or purify abjection.
Rather, catharsis entails a repetition of abjection itself through rhythm and song:
Getting rid of it [the abject] is out of the question. [... ] It is a repetition through
rhythm and song, therefore through what is not yet, or no longer is 'meaning', but
arranges, defers, differentiates and organizes, harmonizes pathos, bile, warmth, and
enthusiasm. Benveniste translates 'rhythm' by 'trace' and 'concatenation'.
Prometheus is 'rhythmical', and we call him 'bound'. An attachment on the near and
far side of language. [... ] That discourse is audible, and through the speech that it
mimics it repeats on another register what the latter does not say. (Kristeva 1982, 28-
29)
We may read Kristeva's thought here as saying the following: Through catharsis, which is
not simply a purging or discarding of what's ugly, dirty, or despondent in human life, we see
the interplay between the semiotic and the symbolic, an interplay that itself is repetitive and
rhythmic, miming the impure without pushing it to the side. The result, according to
Kristeva, is a "mimesis of the passions," which ranges from suffering to enthusiasm, in
"language with pleasurable accessories," i.e., rhythm and song (1982, 28).
For Aristotle in the Poetics, rhythm (rhythmos), harmony (harmonia), and speech
(logos) are three ways in which mimesis comes into being, either in mixing with one another,
as harmony and rhythm do in dancing, or in their singularity, as Aristotle suggests the
-----------,--_..,----------
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Socratic logos is a kind of imitation (Poet. 1447b 11_12).49 Mimesis itself differs regarding
what's being imitated (e.g., a serious person [spoudios] in tragedy, or an inferior [phaulos]
person in comedy) or in the ways that the imitation occurs (e.g., through painting, dance,
poetry), but finds a common thread insofar as imitations are of those acting (pratlontas, Poet.
1448a). However, if we understand imitation to be of those acting by itself, this condition
alone isn't saying much, for Aristotle says that "nothing is common to Homer and
Empedocles except the meter [metron]," for we speak of Homer as a poet and Empedocles as
giving an account of nature [ph usiologos] (Poet. 1447b 17-20). So it seems either that the
meter in which one writes or speaks is decisive for understandingpoiesis, or that these two
Greeks have nothing in common.
One might read the beginning of the Poetics as Aristotle's attempt to dichotomize the
poetic logos from one who tries to give a logos of nature, and to do so would not be
completely inappropriate, for certainly Aristotle focuses most of his time on working through
aspects of tragedy that seem to be a mimesis of events that never happened, but that are
intimately bound to how we ourselves act. One might then read catharsis in the end as an
experience of witnessing the whole of tragedy exemplified through one sufferer who might
then be able to cleanse and thus divorce oneself from the action on the stage. However, if we
ask the question of what's common to poiesis as a whole regarding both the poet and the
account-giver, we see that mimesis itself belongs both to natural and poietic aspects of
human life.
"Two aitiai [explanations]," Aristotle says, "and these natural [phusikai], are likely to
have generated poetics as a whole" (Poet. 1448b4-5). Since Aristotle begins the Poetics by
saying that his inquiry into poiesis begins first according to nature from the first things (Poet.
49 Mimesis concerns not only techne, but also our ethos (synetheias, Poet. 1447a20-21).
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1447a13), it may be no surprise that he offers two likely explanations for the genesis of
poiesis: From childhood, imitation is natural to human beings because it is how we start to
learn from others, and second, we naturally take pleasure in imitations. The link between
learning through mimesis and taking pleasure in it is decisive for Aristotle because it is
through witnessing something terrible-for example, a corpse-inpoiesis that we are pleased
with something that might otherwise be devastating to see or is painful to us. Aristotle thus
says that learning, which is pleasant to all (but especially to philosophers), shows itself when
we are confronted withpoiesis, which itself produces pleasure. Learning, as both
developmentally mimetic from childhood and pleasant in adulthood, thus relieves the
pressure we might feel from coming face to face with a corpse itself.
What happens in this artistic or poetic encounter, however, is not that the painted
corpse is a representation of a "real" corpse in itself, for the poietic corpse is not a corpse at
all. But, the way in which it is not so provides a clue to the role of pleasure in art for
Aristotle. Poiesis is not mere representation of things in themselves; instead, something
poietic produces pleasure (remember, a natural affect proper to human beings) on account of
the mimesis involved in bringing it about. The production of a work of art, in other words,
yields something greater than itself, producing pleasure in those who witness the work on
account of the poet's craft. A kinship to nature opens strangely here: Poiesis presumes to be
that which is made, the end of which is outside of itself (think of the relationship between an
artist and her artwork, with the artwork exceeding the "intentions" of the artist), but it also
strikes to the core of human life, resonating with our human "nature," whatever that might be.
Rhythm, harmony, speech: In what ways are these mimetic aspects tied to the
production of a work of art, and in what ways are they natural to human beings? Aristotle
says that "to imitate is natural for us, as well as harmony and rhythm" (Poet. 1448b20), yet
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harmony and rhythm are also indicators ofpoiesis in its relationship to our human nature. In
poetry, rhythm comes through in the meter in which one composes (Poet. 1448b22); in
dancing, it is kinship with the music's beat (Poet. 1447a27). Rhythm is thus not only proper
to what we do by nature from childhood, but is also what seeps into things we make
poietically. It is, we might say, that which underlies and guides our compositions without
itself being anything.
Yet rhythm fixes Aristotle's thinking ofpoiesis in more than the way in which
something is composed or the means by which it achieves its status as a work of art and is
evident inpoiesis, for the aim of it is something beautiful (Poet. 1447a8). Beauty (to kalon)
consists in a magnitude and order, and, sticking with his emphasis on the nature of the thing
itself (po iesis), has a limit: "the greater is always the more beautiful with respect to
magnitude up to the point that it remains manifest all together" (Poet. 1451 a9-ll). It is here
that we can recall Eryximachus' emphasis on rhythm as it brings oppositions into harmony
and itself is a sign of Eros, if not of health. Recalling how a good physician knows how to
harmonize strife in the body, might we not also ask if a good poet, broadly construed, knows
how to harmonize poetry with human life, or poetry with nature or life itself? Or, better put,
is it not a beautiful poet who brings the nature of things to light? Though this harmonization
seems to ask a bit much of our poets, Aristotle notes that "[a]fter undergoing many changes,
tragedy stopped when it attained its own nature" (Poet. 1449a16). In attaining its own
nature-which is itself poetic-the meter for beautiful poetry is exemplified by Homer, one
who relies on the logos as transformative mimesis in tragedy. Yet tragedy, as I've noted, "is
an imitation, not of human beings, but of actions [praxeos] and of life [biou]" (Poet.
1450a17); i.e., tragedy dramatically is the whole of nature, not as it has happened to unfold in
197
a historical chronology of events, but as what is possible, and what is possible is persuasive
(Poet. 1451b16-17)-we might add, the most persuasive of all.
Section V
Tyche: "That Little Something"
While much can and should be said about how Kristeva thinks of modern poetry in
particular as responses to our peculiarly contemporary experiences of cultural, historical, and
individual abjection, what we need most importantly to note is that rhythm, as semiotic
chora, functions within the symbolic realm as that which both threatens and guarantees the
formation of a subject in and through language. It is with her writing in mind, when
infonned by the earth-world dialectic in Heidegger, that I turn to a poem by Charles Simic:
That Little Something (by Charles Simic)
The likelihood of ever finding is small.
It's like being accosted by a woman
And asked to help her look for a pearl
She lost right here in the street.
She could be making it all up,
Even her tears, you say to yourself
As you search under your feet,
Thinking, not in a million years ...
It's one of those summer afternoons
When one needs a good excuse
To step out of a cool shade.
In the meantime, what ever became of her?
And why, years later, do you still,
Off and on, cast your eyes to the ground
As you hurry to some appointment
Where you are now certain to arrive late.
We learn, in the first sentence, that "it" is missing, but we don't know what "it" is: a lost
pearl, an intimation of love, a hint of meaning. Is "it" supplied by the title? "That Little
Something" might be exactly what the speaker is looking for, though it's certainly not clear
198
what the little something might be. The world created by the poem-a world of loss and
searching, hope and finding-occurs in a simile: "It's like being accosted by a woman," we
learn. But we learn this too late: That "little something" is missing, and the world-the
world of the speaker, of appointments and dates-does not care. We thus have two worlds, a
world within a world, the world of the speaker's simile, and the world of the poem, a world
of wonderment ("what ever became of her?" She was so beautiful, we might add), and a
world in "real time," i.e., the landscape of symbols, dates, and language. If read in this way,
then, the simile might structurally function as the earth in Heidegger less than as world:
Jutting through the poem, causing the speaker to more than pause, accosted by a woman who
doesn't exist, she emblazons the speaker's memory and ruptures an otherwise anticipatable
world.
If read with Kristeva in mind, we might say that the speaker's simile functions like
the semiotic, for it is the digressive disruption of the world of the symbolic. Liguistically, we
can see how this is the case: Note the ellipsis in the second paragraph, a whiff of thought, a
desire that trails off, makes no sense in the world of symbols, a trace of the uncanny. We
cannot-though must-ask what "became of her," because, in a sense, the poem demands
what has become, and is always becoming, of us. "That Little Something," then, might be
both a reminder of earth and the semiotic is it defies any language of "it" that we anticipate in
the first line of the poem. (Don't we want to suppy it? "The likelihood of ever finding [it] is
smal1.") But instead "it's" missing, and thus we come full circle, recycling back to
Heidegger's poem, and to a question: What, after all, is the poetic character of thinking? In
reference to Simic's poem, the poetic character of thinking might very well be the little
something propelling the speaker, jumping to an earth within the world, unveiling beings in
their multitude, brilliance, and becoming. Or it might be that the thinking character of poetry
199
as it anchors and disrupts our lives dynamically recalls us to the topology of Being,
characterized as it has been throughout this dissertation by the meddlesome workings of
tyche, that little something propelling this investigation.
I began this chapter with Eryximachus' speech in Plato's Symposium in order to raise
a question concerning the relationship between Eros and Aesclepius, love and health, as it
comes into being through a knowledge of how to harmonize opposites, or things that repel
each other, either within a body or within a life. In turning to Kristeva, we encountered the
mutually dependent relationship between the semiotic and symbolic aspects of a human life
both in one's experience and in poetic language and how it is that a subject comes into being
from a nothing-the semiotic chora-to inhabit the symbolic realm, always in constant
consultation with the semiotic. I suggested that rhythm, as the semiotic chora that shows
itself in poetic texts as a language beyond language, functions as the unground that
guarantees our possibilities as poietic beings, belonging both to nature and to art. In
considering Aristotle also on rhythm, I traced his thinking about rhythm as a natural pathos
for mimesis, both developmentally and in poiesis, as well as that which points to the
possibility of a beautiful meter (which is a sign of rhythm) in tragedy and human life as that
which is possible for us.
Both Aristotle and Kristeva speak of a shared concern, which is the necessity of
poiesis in human life as that which destabilizes an otherwise static sense of self and truly
allows catharsis-repetition, mimesis, abjection, and action-to happen. For Kristeva, the
ultimate recourse for such an experience when thinking about how a subject comes into being
is literature; for Aristotle, it's tragedy. Both are poetry. In Tales ofLove, Kristeva says this
of literature's power:
200
Thus perceived, literature appears to me as the privileged place where meaning is
elaborated and destroyed, where it slips away when one might think that it is being
renewed. Such is the metaphor's effect. Likewise, the literary experience stands
revealed as an essentially amorous experience, unstabilizing the same through its
identification with the other. [... ] We are all subjects of the metaphor. (1987,274)
The poetic experience, then, is an experience of love, but is a fluid love through
destabilization, rhythm, concatenation; it is a love of what is possible. In so being, as
Roberto Calasso says, "Eros is the helplessness of that which is sovereign: it is strength
abandoning itself to something elusive, something that stings" (1994, 377). In relation to the
"metaphor's effect," Kristeva also says that '''the ultimate support of Aristotelian metaphor is
a being who acts. The poetic as well as the categorical metaphor merely convey 'motion and
life'; yet Aristotle stresses that 'act is motion'" (1987, 274). In other words, it is cathartic
movement through an affirmation ofpoietic possibility, in art (Heidegger), the practice of the
speaking subject (Kristeva), and tragedy (Aristotle).
000
A few concluding words about the role of tyche in Greek thought are now warranted.
The work laid out in these pages by no means exhausts the importance of tyche for the
Greeks, but instead is offered as a way to begin tracing its appearance through Aristotle's
thought in the Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and Poetics. Further work on tyche would
require a closer look at a host of related issues mentioned and discussed all too briefly in
these pages, from dynamis and energeia concerning what it means for something to be an
arche kineseos (origin or source of motion) in both the Physics and Nicomachean Ethics to
the ways in which tragedy helps us understand the place of human beings in the cosmos in
light of what befalls us. Such a discussion would ultimately return us to the relationship
between necessity (ananke) and tyche in the Physics and also in the Metaphysics, for it's
possible that these words are closer together for the Greeks than we might normally think.
201
Too, seeing how tyche cashes out in Greek tragedy itself would be a natural place to tum, for
there we would see how Antigone, e.g., finds herself bereft of tyche, while Oedipus first
deems himself the most unfortunate of mortals (upon recognizing what he's done), but at the
end of his life, the most fortunate of us.
As it is, however, we might do well to recall a Native American statement that
resonates with the Greek world and hopefully the work begun in these pages. "Whether it
happened so or not, I do not know. But if you think about it, you will see that it is true"
(Deloria 200 I, 6). Said in response to an interlocutor who asks about the origins of a sacred
pipe, Black Elk utters these words, and we would fare well to heed them regarding tyche for
the Greeks.
202
CHAPTER VII
EPILOGUE:
THE MYTHIC HORIZONS OF TYCHE
"And we'll say," Glaucon said, "that what the Muses answer is right."
"Necessarily," I said. "For they are Muses."
"What," he said, "do the Muses say next?"
-Plato's Republic (547a)
As all good stories do, this one begins with a girl. The girl in question is Persephone,
and we meet her as she stands on the brink of what will become a precipice, of what will
become her life. As Persephone explains to her grieving mother, Demeter, near the end of
the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, how it is that she finds herself as queen of the underworld,
Persephone notes that her story began rather joyously while picking flowers with her
playmates (11. 416-429). We are familiar enough with Persephone's life to know the gist of
the story, i.e., that a chasm opens in the earth and that she weds Zeus' brother, the Host-to-
Many; that the life and death of vegetation on earth come to be determined by her presence
and absence on earth; that her worried mother wanders and wails for years in search of her
lost daughter, lying and disguising herself to uncover the truth of her daughter's
disappearance. We are familiar enough with Persephone to be skeptical of pomegranates, for
they, we think, are the source of death on earth, and we certainly know never to eat more than
a few of the bittersweet seeds, lest the consequences of Persephone's tasting happen to us as
well. What we may not be familiar with, however, is how this story happens in the moment
of its birth, and thus we might reflect on this story as one of a doomed-yet necessary-
happening, as a girl blooms (thalereln, Homer 1. 79) into adulthood, transgressing the roles
203
usually assumed by mythical maidens. We might think that Persephone's lot is found in the
abduction by her eventual groom, the Host-to-Many, and we may think the story yet another
one in a catalogue about old men who prey on young girls. We may also think that the story
is one of seduction, of a young girl (provocatively, most often referred to as Kore before
marrying) being tempted by the power of a god, and we may think her seduction as a thirst
for this godly power, unknown to most mortals.
It may tum out that we think all of these things. What we do know for certain is that
something happens to Persephone, and this happening occurs while picking flowers with her
playmates. In Persephone's explanation to Demeter detailing her story, Persephone notes
that among her many friends present at the moment of her seduction or abduction, birth or
death, is TuX'll [Tyche]. Well after the facts of this story, and after mythoi of other
disappearances of flower-plucking mythical women (Europa and Oritheia among them) have
woven their way through the streets of Athens and elsewhere, Pausanias tells us, in his Guide
To Greece, that this reference-Homer's-is the first citation of Tyche in Greece (Pausanias
4:30,4-6).50 Pausanias notes, however, that Homer makes no explicit mention of Tyche
being the mightiest goddess regarding human affairs and, according to Pausanias, Homer
says nothing else about the goddess Tyche (4:30,5-6). Homer thus marks the birth-if not the
life-of Tyche as it shows itself at least poetically, at least as a goddess.
However, the presence of Tyche in the Homeric hymn appears not only as a playmate
accompanying Persephone in her meadow-though this is where tyche shows itself as Tyche,
a goddess-but first appears in discussing the characteristics of Persephone's future
bridegroom. Before Persephone and Demeter rejoin near the end of the hymn, and even
before Demeter embarks on a journey to find and retrieve her daughter from somewhere she
50 ITpwTOe; liE W· aLlia E1TaL~oaTO E' TOLe; E1TEOW "OflTJpae; TUXTJe; flv~flTJv'
204
knows not, Hekate, in an attempt to answer Demeter's pleas regarding the plight of her
missing daughter, notes that the Host-to-Many is not an entirely dismal mate for her
daughter, even ifhe does reside in Hades. In trying to persuade Demeter to consider
Aidoneus (one of the many names of the god in question) as a suitable bridegroom, Hekate
notes that both he and Zeus, since they are brothers, come from the same godly stock.
Furthermore, Aidoneus is honorable, and lives with those who fall to him because of his own
chance lot, receiving a third of godly rule over all, with his domain being the underworld
(UflcPL bE rLfl~IJEUaXEIJ we; ra lTpwra OLlXTpLXa oaOflOe; hUX8Tl [11.85-86]). On account of
tyche-strangely, on account of that for which an account cannot, properly speaking, be
given-the Host-To-Many comes to inhabit Hades. So we can establish a link, however
tentative, between Persephone and her husband in the Homeric hymn, who both, in some
relation to tyche (be it the child of the gods or otherwise), come to find each other, gaining
perhaps both their lots and their lives.
Homer's story involving Tyche, however, is certainly not the only one; it is merely
first. As such, its precedence is notable, and we'll return to this version of Persephone's
story in a moment. Greek mythology being as multifarious as it is influential, let us look at a
few other notable sources regarding Tyche in order to consider the ways in which it first gets
situated in Greek thought. In Hesiod's Theogony we learn that Tyche is among the eldest
Oceanids, the many daughters of Oceanus and Tethys (Hesiod 1. 360). Oceanus himself is a
backward-flowing river ("Ocean") that bounds the earth and is from which all rivers and seas
flow; he might even be considered the origin of all earthly things (and, perhaps, the god of
the border between this world and Hades). In order to cross to the underworld, one must
cross his river (i.e., him), under the watchful eye of his most terribly clever eldest daughter,
Styx (OELIJ~ L:ru~ [1. 775]), who lives separated from the gods in a great rocky domain near
205
Hades' gates. However, Oceanus himself is a gentle god, and the only Titan who did not
attack his father, Uranus, in the rebellious Titanomachy. His wife, too, is gentle: Tethys
nursed and protected fickle Hera when the Olympians fought the Titans. In Hesiod's story,
then, the birth of Tyche, arguably the most powerful offspring of Oceanus and Tethys, might
be construed as peaceful and loving.
In his "Olympian Ode," Pindar situates Tyche as a daughter of Zeus himself (Orphic
Hymn 72, 11. 1-2), and if we align this version with Homer's, we can perhaps deem
Persephone (the daughter of Zeus and Demeter) and Tyche as half-sisters, related in sharing a
father, but not a mother. In this short hymn, Pindar refers to Tyche as a saving goddess who,
in being the daughter of Zeus himself, has a hand in seafaring adventures, decisions made
about wars, and the general counsel of the polemoi (citizens). In addition to having a say in
these three areas, according to Pindar, Tyche also has a hand in the many things that befall
(aufl~oAoJ), Pindar 1. 10) us, things that we ourselves could not anticipate. To some people
there comes an unseen reversal of an otherwise ordinarily anticipated chain of events, and
these things that happen to people-of which they could hardly have dreamed-change the
course of everything in a short space of time, according to the hymn (Pindar 11. 10-17). The
powerful hand of Tyche thus establishes itself here as that which is symbolon, literally a
"falling together" of events that, in being unanticipatable, relinquish the control a person may
think that one has over her life. The force of Tyche thus shows itself here as a saving goddess
(aw't"ELpa Tux-a, Pindar 1. 1) whose saving powers might very well be in the destruction of a
life, i.e., in the reversal of one person's anticipated good fortune based on a series of
identifiably diligent and willful acts, for whom being "saved" might actually result in being
thrust into danger, swept into the sea, or galloping into war.
206
This moment of falling, described by Pindar, is decisive for Persephone. Relating to
Tyche as a friend in the Homeric hymn, Persephone disappears through a chasm in the earth,
protesting to her mother that it all happened against her wishes (Homer 1. 432). However, we
might argue that the daughter protests too much in order to soothe her mother, for Persephone
notes that it was not by her own desire that she returned from Hades to console her mother,
but that, since Persephone's disappearance, Demeter's cessation of vegetative life on earth-
compounded with a vengeful ire toward the gods-had its share in an impermissible
destruction of living things such that the gods summoned Persephone to soothe her
destructive mother (Homer 11. 405-410). Thus we might question Persephone's sincerity in
her return to her mother, and we must wonder whether Persephone, now wed to a god, might
not prefer her powerful life to that of a mere maiden. After all, not until she descends to
Hades is called by her name, "Persephone," in the hymn with regularity (i.e., she is called
Kore before her disappearance in all cases except when Hekate refers to her as Persephone
when first encountering Demeter). After her descent she is called daiphr6n ("thoughtful," 1.
359), and periphr6n ("circumspect," Homer 1. 359, II. 370-371), two words that ring of
phronesis ("practical wisdom") and that are attributable to Persephone only after her
seduction/ abduction. Interestingly, she is first deemed to have these attributes by her
husband, who, in calling her "thoughtful Persephone," perhaps recognizes something in her
that others don't. Also suggestive, Persephone is called Kore only one time after her
disappearance, when she is reunited with her mother, to whom she plays a subordinate role
(Homer 1. 439). The narrator of the hymn calls her Kore, noting that Hekate, upon the
reunion of Demeter and her daughter, often caressed Persephone/Kore as mother and
daughter themselves embraced. Thus, as the role of daughter, Persephone is deemed Kore; as
queen of the underworld, she is Persephone: thoughtful, unruly, powerful. In the Theogony,
207
Persephone is ETTlXWlls IIEpoEetJOVEllls, both praised and dreaded (Homer 1. 768, 774). In this
way, she may be importantly related to her eldest sister, Styx, who resides near her and is
herself de/non, or terribly clever, as mentioned above. It thus remains that Persephone
herself, with all of her power, is-as perhaps Tyche, embodied, personified, and praised is as
well-feared and loved, missing from the earth and yet ever present below or within it.
208
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