ARISTOTLE, NATURE AND THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

In 1936, Arthur O. Lovejoy published the first edition of his celebrated work The Great
Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1). In this work, Lovejoy traces the
history of a cluster of connected ideas from their origination on the parts of Plato and
Aristotle through European history up to the stage when they were challenged in the period
of the Romantic movement by writers such as F. W. J. Schelling.

From Plato, Lovejoy derives the theme of the perfect sufficiency of the Good, and thus, in
effect, of God (Lovejoy, 42). This theme was developed by Aristotle in the Eudemian
Ethics as implying that God has no need of the material world and is indifferent to what
goes on in it (Lovejoy, 43). But Lovejoy also relates that in the Timaeus, Plato explains the
existence of the world of nature as stemming from God’s lack of envy or ungrudgingness,
and his related desire that the world should be as far as possible as perfect as himself
(Lovejoy, 47). And while this is all said in that dialogue about the Demiurgus or Artificer of
the world, it can be interpreted (2) as implying that the Good itself, and thus the source of
all being, has these characteristics and attitudes (Lovejoy, 48). Accordingly the created
world must itself, as the Timaeus concludes, be self-sufficient too, and thus be lacking in
nothing (Lovejoy, 49); and this is the first of the key themes of Lovejoy’s Great Chain. This
being so, the world must contain all the beings that are possible (3). Lovejoy calls the
proposition that all possibilities are exemplified ‘the Principle of Plenitude’ (Lovejoy, 52),
the second of the four key principles of his Great Chain.

Aristotle, Lovejoy remarks, explicitly rejects the Principle of Plenitude, saying in the
Metaphysics “it is not necessary that everything that is possible should exist in actuality”
[(II, 1003a2)]. Yet Aristotle put forward an idea that came later to be regarded as an
implication of the Principle of Plenitude, the idea of continuity; and he was responsible for
the introduction into natural history of belief in the shading-off of the properties of one class
into those of the next. Here Lovejoy cites a passage from The Parts of Animals, intended to
show that it cannot be said that all mammals are either quadrupeds or bipeds, for
‘participating in the nature of both man and quadrupeds is the ape’ (IV, 13, 697b ), which
belongs to neither class or to both (Lovejoy, 57). As Lovejoy now adds, the Principle of
Continuity can be derived from the Principle of Plenitude; for if there is a possible
intermediate kind between two species, then the Principle of Plenitude predicts that it will
be instantiated, or the universe would be gap-ridden, defective and less complete than it
might be.

The Principle of Continuity prepares the way, at least in Lovejoy’s view, for a Principle of
Gradation, for some of Aristotle’s passages give rise to the idea of arranging (at least) all
animals in a single graded scale according to their degree of ‘perfection’ (Lovejoy, 58).
Thus in De Anima he suggests a hierarchical arrangement of all organisms based on their
‘powers of soul’, from the nutritive to the rational, with ‘each higher order possessing all
the powers of those below it in the scale, and an additional differentiating one of its own’
(Lovejoy, 58-59). This was worked out for a small number of classes only. But if we press
into service more general passages, as does W.D. Ross in his book Aristotle (Ross, 178),
passages such as ’all individual things may be graded according to the degree to which they
are infected with [mere] potentiality’, then we can arrive at a principle of Unilinear
Gradation, implicitly extending to everything without restriction.

This principle, at least for Lovejoy, completes the conception of the universe that he names
the ‘Great Chain of Being’, which combines the Principles of Self-Sufficiency, Plenitude,
Continuity and Gradation. The universe, in other words, contains all beings that are
possible, with all the kinds shading into one another, and all capable of arrangement in a
scale of perfection from the humblest to the highest kind possible. (The actual phrase ‘chain
of being’ was coined by Alexander Pope, in a passage quoted by Lovejoy at p. 60.)
Lovejoy’s book traces this idea through the Neoplatonists, who made it explicit, through the
middle ages and the early modern period, until it came to be questioned during the
Romantic movement. That such beliefs were widely held in these historical periods is
difficult to doubt. But it is beyond the scope of this address to follow Lovejoy’s grand
narrative, for our concern is with the philosophy of Aristotle.

Except when the Principle of Gradation is treated as relevant to the Absolute Being as well
as to finite beings, the scale of nature was usually interpreted as concerning finite beings,
with humanity at its pinnacle, and belief in the great chain, thus interpreted, was widely
ascribed to Plato and to Aristotle (4). Given these longstanding historical attributions to
Aristotle, it is worth revisiting some modern debates about Aristotle’s views on nature, to
investigate to what extent he would have subscribed to this set of beliefs in a great chain of
being of the kind just depicted.
[CARONE’S QUALIFICATIONS]

One of these debates concerns what is at the top of the scale or ladder of nature and whether
Aristotle regarded everything as arranged for the sake of human beings. Is humanity really
the pinnacle of nature’s ladder, and possibly also its goal? A passage from the Politics (I 3,
1256b15-22) appears to support this view.

After birth, plants exist for the sake of animals, and the other animals for the sake of
humans – domesticated animals for both usefulness and food, and most if not all wild
animals for food and other assistance, as a source of clothing and other utilities. If, then,
nature makes nothing incomplete or pointless, it is necessary that nature has made them
all for the sake of humans. (5)

This passage appears to make Aristotle adhere to teleological anthropocentrism, the view
that everything exists for the sake of humanity.

But did Aristotle regard humanity as the pinnacle of nature at all, let alone its end? Robert
Wardy has argued otherwise (and that the passage just quoted is an aberration) (Wardy,
1993), while Carone regards the issue as an open one (Carone, 2001, 74). The passage from
the Politics could be just a presentation of a popular view, rather than that of Aristotle
himself; and the fact that humanity is a beneficiary of the lower stages of the scale of nature
need not show anything about the purpose of that scale. Indeed when we ask about the final
goal implicit in the whole scale of nature, that goal turns out for Aristotle not to be
humanity but God, whom everything else aspires to imitate to the extent of its abilities.

The distinction between a goal as a beneficiary and a goal as a final end was, according to
Sedley, made by Aristotle himself in a lost work, the De Philosophia (Sedley, 1991, 180).
God is acknowledged by Sedley to be the ultimate object of aspiration (6), but man, he
claims, is the end as nature’s ultimate beneficiary.

This view, however, raises the problem of whether the heavenly bodies are really held to
move as they do for the sake of humanity. Sedley’s reply is rather complex. The movements
of the heavenly bodies generate the seasons, which are conducive both to plant growth and
to animal generation, and thus beneficial to man. But this does not mean that the heavenly
bodies are lower than man, and move simply for the sake of man. They move as they do
because of the Prime Mover, and as part of the whole system of nature. But the good of the
whole itself benefits humanity, at least at the sublunary level (Sedley, 194-195), and so,
although man is not the highest being, man is still the ultimate end.

This, however, is itself a problematic interpretation of Aristotle. One of its weaker points is
the reliance of Sedley’s Aristotle on global nature and its good, which is supposedly geared
to purposes such as ‘bring(ing ) men rain at the right time and in the right places’ (Sedley,
192); the world is a self-regulating system, of which the ultimate beneficiary is, we are told,
man. Something of this kind was actually, as Sedley remarks, held by the Stoics [(Sedley,
180)]; his suggestion, based in part on passages like the one quoted earlier from the Politics,
is that such an anthropocentric philosophy of nature was also held by Aristotle (Sedley,
180).

Wardy, however, questions whether the passage on which Sedley centrally relies
(Metaphysics  10, 1075a16-17) can bear this interpretation. Certainly this passage
employs a phrase meaning ‘the nature of the whole’, and later compares it to a household;
but it is unclear that anything more carries over from the household analogy to the universe
beyond merely being ordered. Thus when Aristotle asserts that ‘all things are in some joint
arrangement’, the Greek adverb ‘pos’ may not allude to any specific form of purposiveness,
and may rather suggest that Aristotle, in saying that everything is ordered somehow, is
acknowledging that he has no idea which way that is (Wardy, 24). Besides, as Sedley
admits, Aristotle’s silence about anthropocentrism in his Meteorologica and in his
zoological works forms a significant problem for the anthropocentric interpretation.

So, without here discussing the other passages involved in this debate, I am inclined to
adopt the view of Wardy and of Carone that Sedley’s argument for his anthropocentric
interpretation is inconclusive, and that the passage quoted above from the Politics may be
an aberration, even if, as may not be the case, Aristotle intended this passage to be taken
seriously as his own view at all. Purposiveness in Aristotle would largely consist in the
striving of each kind of entity to fulfil its own nature. This is not to deny that for Aristotle
the whole of nature embodies a purpose, but it allows for that purpose to consist in each
thing complying with its nature and imitating, as far as possible, the highest being, as might
be inferred from Lovejoy’s representation of nature as a hierarchy, without making
humanity its goal. As Wardy suggests, Aristotle’s philosophy may have been more
distinctive than Sedley’s interpretation allows, distinctive both from the kind of cosmic
teleology that the Neoplatonists found in Plato, and from that of the Stoics. But if so, we
should remember those aspects of Aristotle that Lovejoy mentions as inconsistent with the
later belief in the Great Chain of Being, as well as those (like the principles of Continuity
and of Gradation) that seem to have contributed to that belief. Aristotle might well have
been surprised at finding his work regarded as one of the springs of the Great Chain of
Being, and even more surprised at the suggestion that he was a source of its more
anthropocentric varieties.

Carone mentions a further qualification to what has come to be regarded as Aristotle’s

commitment to a ‘scale of nature’ with humanity at its apex, and one which challenges the
interpretation on which, for Aristotle, human beings comprise the only species possessed of
reason (Carone, 75-76). She cites Andrew Coles, who has argued that, by contrast with a
‘saltatory view’ of Aristotle’s understanding of the scale of nature, which appears to receive
support from passages in the Nicomachaean Ethics and the Politics, and which involves
there being clear-cut gaps between the species, it is possible to adopt instead a ‘gradual’
view, for which Aristotle upholds instead a continuum in nature (s s),
with characteristics such as intelligence possessed in different degrees and forms by
different species. (Incidentally Coles makes it clear (Coles, 289) that by ‘the scale of nature’
he means precisely Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being, and this makes it likely that Carone,
who adopts his terminology, meant the same.) Coles finds numerous passages in the
zoological works that provide evidence in favour of the gradual view, and of Aristotle
finding some degree of both ‘phronesis’ and ‘dianoia’ among non-human animals (Coles,
1997). This being so, the case for Aristotle adhering to an anthropocentrist teleology based
on rationality as a specific difference is obviously further eroded. It may be added that the
gradualist view much better fits Lovejoy’s interpretation of Aristotle as supporting the
Principle of Continuity than the saltatory or gap-leaping view would be capable of doing.

[INDIFFERENCE TOWARDS THE ENVIRONMENT?]

Carone proceeds to find both Eugene Hargrove and myself to detect indifference towards
environmental change on the part of Aristotle, partly on the basis of his ascribing
anthropocentric teleology to Aristotle. Carone cites a passage of Meteorologica I 14 as the
one that both of us draw attention to.

In this passage, Aristotle rejects the view that the sea is drying up, even though it is seen to
withdraw in places. For in many other places the sea has encroached on formerly dry land.
He also rejects the view that this is due to a growth of the universe as a whole; for this is to
forget that the earth is minuscule when compared to the universe. Rather it is due to there
being a great winter with excessive rains, but this takes place at different times in different
regions of the earth (352a17-35). Carone goes on to assert that this passage does little more
than argue that the earth displays a large-scale cosmic balance, and that Aristotle is not
displaying either indifference or hostility towards the environment (p. 76).

Hargrove’s grounds for detecting such indifference include what he takes to be Aristotle’s
anthropocentric teleology; the world is, in his view, arranged so as to serve human interests,
and so its changes need not be a matter for concern (Hargrove, 25). If we reject this
understanding of Aristotle, then this ground can be discarded. However, Attfield did not
(and does not) endorse this interpretation (7).

Another of Hargrove’s grounds is his view that for Aristotle human beings are unmoved
movers, and thus relatively invulnerable to environmental change. To quote Hargrove, ‘In
Aristotle’s philosophy, a human being is an unmoved mover, something that can move
other things without itself being moved, which in environmental terms translates into an
entity that can affect its environment without itself being affected.’ (Hargrove, 32). It is
unclear on what Hargrove based this claim; his passage concerns the Greek belief in the
indestructibility of the soul, but he does not show that this view was held by Aristotle, or
how, if it had been, this would have the implication of environmental invulnerability. But
once again, Attfield explicitly rejected this view (Attfield, 81), and thus cannot be accused
of sharing it.

Hargrove’s remaining ground consisted in Aristotle’s acceptance of belief in the

indestructibility of ultimate reality; and this suggestion was accepted by Attfield, who wrote
as follows: ‘his belief in a stable teleological world-system of entities reliably discharging
their inbuilt purposes still probably suffices to vindicate the point’, the point being his
inability to be concerned about the fragility and vulnerability of the environment. Attfield’s
partial endorsement of Hargrove’s reasoning thus partially upholds Carone’s view that both
Hargrove and Attfield detect a kind of environmental indifference expressed in this part of
the Meteorologica.

But is this passage really just a defence of cosmic balance and thus as anodyne as she
suggests? Evidence for a different view can be found in the continuation of this passage at
352b16-20. The context is the great cycle of nature, and the way in which various districts
dry up for part of that cycle. Here now is the English translation of the Loeb translator
(H.D.P. Lee) of the passage just mentioned:

Since some change must necessarily take place in the whole, but this change cannot be
growth or decay as the universe is permanent, it must be as we say that the same districts
are not always moistened by sea and rivers nor always dry.

The problem here lies in the assumption that the universe is permanent. This claim cannot
just mean that the whole remains the whole, since such a tautology would not allow
Aristotle to make the claim that he makes, by supplying a reason against universal growth
and also against universal decay. His assumption here is rather that the universe, despite its
fluctuations, is in the end qualitatively unchanging, and that the fluctuations eventually
cancel one another out. This metaphysical assumption is one that his acceptance of a stable
teleological world-system of entities reliably discharging their inbuilt purposes could well
have motivated. But the assumption that the universe is permanent (and probably that it is
essentially so) does appear to pre-empt any worries about the terrestrial environment being
fragile and vulnerable, except perhaps worries concerning temporary trends that can be
expected not to last more than a few decades.

We should, at the same time, acknowledge that environmental concern, including concern
that human activity is capable of undermining ecological systems, is a recent phenomenon,
characteristic of the period since George Perkins Marsh published his book Man and Nature
in 1864. To some degree, then, any surprise that Aristotle displayed indifference towards
the environment is itself anachronistic. Yet there were ancient ecological problems, such as
deforestation and desertification, and some ancicnt writers showed awareness of
anthropogenic impacts; Theophrastus seems to have been an example (8). That is why,
without endorsing most of Hargrove’s grounds, I continue to take his view rather than that
of Carone on this matter, and on this passage of the Meteorologica in particular.

There is a passage a few lines later that exemplifies Aristotle’s unconcern about interference
with the environment. At 352b27-31 Aristotle relates that both the Egyptian king Sesostris
and later the Persian king Darius attempted to build a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea,
but each of them abandoned the project on the ground that the sea was higher than the land
close to the river, and were afraid that ‘the water of the river would be ruined by an
admixture of sea-water’. Without remarking what a catastrophe this would have been, or
how human intervention could, if so, have completely undermined the ecology and the
agriculture of Egypt, Aristotle simply proceeds to develop his point that this illustrates how
the whole area was once sea but was more recently replaced with deposits of silt. His
interest lies in the great cycle of nature, but not in the disruption that he believed the
building of a canal could have generated. It looks as if his metaphysical belief in nature’s
permanence prevented him from taking with due seriousness the apparent historical danger
that he here records.

[BACK TO THE GREAT CHAIN]

Nevertheless if he had believed that nature is already ordered in the human interest, then his
metaphysics would have been a greater obstacle to the possibility of concern about the
impacts of human action than it was. Instead, as Carone reminds us, he held that human art
can improve on nature (Physics II 8, 199 a15-16), and his various works on ethics
presuppose that humans can improve the state of the world as well as of society. They also
presuppose that, contrary to the Principle of Plenitude, there are many possibilities as yet
unrealised, and worth striving to attain.

Thus his actual beliefs about the scale of nature did not form the blockage to later
investigations that they might have formed if he had adhered to versions of the Great Chain
of Being for which either teleological anthropocentrism or the principle of Plenitude were
central. His adherence to the Principle of Continuity seems to have actually fostered his
pursuit of natural history, seeking out the many new kinds of organism which this principle
could be seen as predicting. Also, as Nussbaum emphasises, his beliefs about humanity and
hierarchy did not prevent him regarding the study of animals as worthwhile, for, as he said
in The Parts of Animals (645a26-27), ‘If there is anyone who thinks it is base to study
animals, he should have the same thought about himself.’ (Nussbaum, 2006, 348) Monte
Ransome Johnson, who joins in rejecting an anthropocentric interpretation, adds that
‘Philosophy is … [for Aristotle] a kind of biophilia, which loves and delights in natural
objects and their causes … in their own right, not insofar as they can turn a profit.’
(Johnson, 2005, 290). There is no space here to cover any other recent research.

Thus the incorporation of themes from Aristotle such as the Principles of Continuity and
Gradation into the later Great Chain of Being, among neo-Platonists and medieval and Early
Modern thinkers, has misleadingly made him appear less different from Plato and from the
Stoics than he was. Lovejoy’s history attests an important aspect of his long-term influence,
but also tends to detract from his distinctiveness. We can be sure that he would have
welcomed the modern re-emergence of animal studies. And, even if he would probably
have been reluctant to share in ecological concern, his interest in the wonder of plants and
animals would almost certainly have led him to applaud the development of ecological
science. Maybe, despite his apparently anthropocentric passage in Politics, he would also
have welcomed the widespread modern rejection of metaphysical anthropocentrism as well.

NOTES

1. Lovejoy’s work was previously delivered at Harvard as The William James Lectures
in 1933.

2. In line with the idea of the Good being presented in the Republic as the source of all
being.

3. Or, as Lovejoy re-expresses this theme, ‘it takes all kinds to make a world’
(Lovejoy, 51)

4. Henri Daudin, for example, affirms that a recognisable version of these beliefs was
the work of Aristotle, in a passage quoted by Lovejoy:

By these assertions [of Aristotle], there was established, from the very beginning of natural
history, a principle which was long to remain authoritative: that according to which living
beings are linked to one another by regularly graduated affinities … (Daudin, 1926, 81)

adding in a nearby context belief in a hierarchy of beings, and in there being no gaps
between the forms to be found in the world.
5. This is David Sedley’s translation, slightly modified by Gabriela R. Carone. See
Gabriela R. Carone, ‘The Classical Greek Tradition’, in Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion
to Environmental Philosophy, Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 67-80,
at p. 74.

6. Indeed, as he remarks, this is one matter that all students of Aristotle agree about
(Sedley, 179, 180))

7. See Attfield, 1994, 79 and 81, and the stance adopted in the current presentation.

8. To judge from Clarence Glacken’s discussion of Theophrastus’s work.

REFERENCES

Attfield, Robin, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects, Aldershot, UK and

Brookfield, VT: 1994

Carone, Gabriela R., ‘The Classical Greek Tradition’, in Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion
to Environmental Philosophy, Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 67-80

Coles, Andrew, ‘Animal and childhood cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and the scala
naturae’, in W. Kullman and S. Foellinger (eds), Aristotelische Biologie, Suttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1997, 287-323

Daudin, Henri, De Linné à Jussieu, Paris: F. Alcan, 1926

Glacken, Clarence J., Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western
Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1967

Hargrove, Eugene C., Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, 1988

Johnson, Monte Ransome (2005), Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005

Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea,
Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press, 1936

Nussbaum, Martha, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership,

Cambridge, MA and London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006

Sedley, David, ‘Is Aristotle’s teleology anthropocentric?”, Phronesis, 36, 1991, 179-196

Wardy, Robert, ‘Aristotelian rainfall or the lore of averages’, Phronesis, 38, 1993, 18-30
 ARISTOTLE, NATURE AND THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING
Robin Attfield, Cardiff University, UK
Arthur O. Lovejoy drew attention in his 1936 work The Great Chain of Being to a tradition
that incorporates from Plato the principles of the world’s Self-sufficiency and Plenitude,
and from Aristotle the principles of Continuity and Gradation. In this address I look at
modern debates to investigate to what extent he would subscribe to this tradition.
The view that humanity is the apex and the final end of the chain is often ascribed to
Aristotle. But despite what he says at Politics 1256b15-22, there are grounds, as Robert
Wardy has argued, to doubt whether this was his view. The apex of the chain is the
Unmoved Mover rather than human beings, who are beneficiaries but not goals.
Further, Andrew Coles has shown that in his biological works Aristotle ascribes phronesis
and dianoia not only to humanity but also to some nonhuman animals, and this supports his
view of the species being gradualist (as the principle of Continuity would also suggest)
rather than saltatory, with humanity sharply differentiated from all other species.
Gabriela Carone ascribes to Eugene Hargrove and Robin Attfield an ascription to Aristotle
of indifference to environmental vulnerability, and rejects this criticism. Hargrove’s
grounds include Aristotle’s supposed anthropocentrism, and others rejected by Attfield. But
Aristotle’s belief in the world’s permanence still supports the indifference interpretation.
Yet the Great Chain tradition effectively makes Aristotle less distinctive from Platonism
and Stoicism than he was, particularly when it represents him as a metaphysical
anthropocentrist. He rejected the principle of Plenitude, and, granted Coles’ gradualist
interpretation, regarded other species as worthy of study. He would have welcomed the
resurgence of animal studies and probably the rise of ecological science, and could even
have welcomed the widespread modern rejection of anthropocentrism.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Attfield, Robin, Environmental Philosophy: Principles and Prospects, Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT:
1994

Carone, Gabriela R., ‘The Classical Greek Tradition’, in Dale Jamieson (ed.), A Companion to Environmental
Philosophy, Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, 67-80

Coles, Andrew, ‘Animal and childhood cognition in Aristotle’s Biology and the scala naturae’, in W.
Kullman and S. Foellinger (eds), Aristotelische Biologie, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997, 287-323

Glacken, Clarence J., Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient
Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967

Hargrove, Eugene C., Foundations of Environmental Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1988

Johnson, Monte Ransome, Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005

Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, Cambridge, MA and
London, UK: Harvard University Press, 1936

Sedley, David, ‘Is Aristotle’s teleology anthropocentric?”, Phronesis, 36, 1991, 179-196

Wardy, Robert, ‘Aristotelian rainfall or the lore of averages’, Phronesis, 38, 1993, 18-30

RA / March 2016