Contrariety according to Aristotle
Table of Contents
Contrariety is the greatest difference between things.
In things that differ in species, the contraries take the form of:
- the extremes from the point of generation
- the distance between extremes
Therefore, the distance between the contraries is the greatest.
Thus, things which differ in genus have no way to one another.
- They are too far distant and are not comparable.
The greatest in each class is complete. This is because:
- the greatest cannot be exceeded
- there is nothing beyond the complete
- The complete difference marks the end of a series
The end is the extreme. Therefore there is nothing beyond the end. Beyond the end there is nothing.
The complete needs nothing further.
Thus, contrariety is complete difference.
Contraries are used in several senses.
- Their modes of completeness will answer to the various modes of contrariety which attach to the contraries.
Contrariety is a difference between 2 things.
There are other commonly accepted definitions of contraries which are also necessarily true.
- The complete difference the greatest difference
We can get no difference beyond it of things differing either in genus or in species.
This is because there is no ‘difference’ between anything and the things outside its genus, and among the things which differ in species the complete difference is the greatest.
- The things in the same genus which differ the most are contrary
The complete difference is the greatest difference between species of the same genus.
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The things in the same receptive material which differ most are contrary (for the matter is the same for contraries)
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Of the things which fall under the same faculty, the most different are contrary (for one science deals with one class of things, and in these the complete difference is the greatest)
The primary contrariety is that between positive state and privation-not every privation, however (for ‘privation’ has several meanings), but that which is complete.
The other contraries must be called so with reference to these, either because:
- they possess these
- they produce or tend to produce them
- they are acquisitions or losses of these or of other contraries.
The kinds of opposition are:
- Contradiction
Contradiction admits of no intermediate. Contraries admit of one intermediate. So, contradiction and contrariety are not the same.
- Privation
Privation [lacking something] is a kind of contradiction.
A thing that lacks means that it is incapable of having some attribute that it is supposed to have, but does not have.
This is why, privation sometimes admits of an intermediate, while contradiction does not.
Privation, therefore, is a contradiction or incapacity which is taken along with the thing.
Everything is equal or not equal, but not everything is equal or unequal, or if it is, it is only within the sphere of that which is receptive of equality.
If, then, the comings-to-be which happen to the matter start from the contraries, and proceed either from the form and the possession of the form or from a privation of the form or shape, clearly all contrariety must be privation, but presumably not all privation is contrariety (the reason being that that has suffered privation may have suffered it in several ways); for it is only the extremes from which changes proceed that are contraries.
- Contrariety
Every contrariety involves, as one of its terms, a privation. But not all cases are alike.
Inequality is the privation of equality and unlikeness of likeness.
On the other hand, vice is the privation of virtue.
But the cases differ in a way already described; in one case we mean simply that the thing has suffered privation, in another case that it has done so either at a certain time or in a certain part (e.g. at a certain age or in the dominant part), or throughout.
This is why in some cases there is a mean (there are men who are neither good nor bad), and in others there is not (a number must be either odd or even).
Some contraries have their subject defined, others have not.
Therefore, one of the contraries is always privative.
But it is enough if this is true of the first-i.e. the generic-contraries, e.g. the one and the many; for the others can be reduced to these.
- Relation