Levi on the weirdness of Aristotle

Levi is back, with a nice brief TRIBUTE TO ARISTOTLE.

One thing that has been sorely missing from recent continental philosophy is an appreciation for Aristotle. In fact, there is a sort of tacit hostility to Aristotle in most of what we’ve seen, other than the strange Aristotelo-Heideggerian attempts to call themselves Aristotelians while having nothing to do with primary substance, the very core of Aristotelian thought.

Derrida’s “White Mythology” treats Aristotle as a sort of naive/oppressive imperialist who wants to enforce univocal meanings on all words (which is simply false; see the Poetics). If you want my take on “White Mythology” (perhaps my least favorite piece of any by Derrida) see the relevant chapter in Guerrilla Metaphysics. To hold that all entities have a unified being in no way entails that some literal meaning dominates all others in reference to that thing. The phrase “straw man” is overused, but perhaps no one is treated thus more often than Aristotle.

And though I hate to say it, Deleuze’s airbrushing of Leibniz’s dependence on Aristotle in The Fold is among Deleuze’s most dubious moments. (You would almost think Leibniz was Spinoza from reading Deleuze’s book– which many of my friends love, and which I try to like, but can’t really bring myself to like.)

We’ll know that continental philosophy has changed colors when we find Aristotle back at the center of discussion. But it will be a much weirder Aristotle than the supposedly “middle-aged” figure whom I never seem to encounter when reading the Aristotelian corpus. This bizarre Macedonian jokester was already described by contemporaries as “of a somewhat mocking disposition.”

And there’s a more general consideration here. If someone is clearly one of the handful of greatest practitioners of a given craft who have ever lived (and how can you doubt it when reading Aristotle?), and yet a given era treats this person as nothing but a bore, a purveyor of middle-of-the-road common sense, then perhaps it is the era that is missing something rather than the great figure.

We’re filled with too much praise for Hegel these days, and too little for Aristotle.