Page 16 - GALIET FORMS AND UNFORMS: Aristotle´s Refutation to Plato IV
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Good and Evil, from his work On the Genealogy of Morality11 asserts that,
“there is no ‘being’ behind the doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is simply fabricated into the doing − the doing is everything. Common people basically double the doing when they have the lightning flash; this is a doing-doing: the same happening is posited first as cause and then once again as its effect.”
(13, 25-29)
Plato, if alive, would agree more with Nietzsche (although Nietzsche might feel repugnance at such thought!) rather than with Aristotle because, according to his Theory of Forms, it would follow that the doer and the doing are one when reading Nietzsche’s dictum “the doer is simply fabricated into the doing.” As the poet is fabricated into the making of the poem, so is Pygmalion fabricated into the making of Galatea for Galatea would not exist without Pygmalion (Aristotle’s efficient cause). Aristotle would reject Plato’s and Nietzsche’s premises based on his Categorical Theory12 that there is a being behind and separate from the doing. Yet, how could the doing be separate from the doer? Both need each other as much as matter and form need each other. However, Plato, would reject Nietzsche’s position that “the doing is everything.” Plato’s ideal
11 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Clark, Maudemaire and Swensen, Alan J. Trans. Indianapolis, USA: Hacket Publishing Company, Inc. 1998. 25
12 Barnes, Jonathan, ed. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton/Bolinger Seriesa LXXI. 2. New Jersey: USA: Princeton University Press. 1995
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