I argue, firstly, that the accounts of 'accident' in Aristotle's Met. V 30 and in Top. I 5 cannot be used to elucidate each other: the Metaphysics passage tries to disentangle the uses of a Greek word, the Topics passage introduces technical terms for Aristotle's semantics. I then argue that the positive definition in Top. I 5 is to be understood in the following way: X is an accident of Y iff X belongs to Y and if there is (...) a Z such that X can belong to Z and also not belong to Z. Thus, being white is an accident of snow. I finally argue that certain shortcomings in the Topics account lead Aristotle to redefine accident in the Posterior Analytics. (shrink)

Aristotle's metaphysics has stimulated intense renewed debate in the past twenty years. Much of the discussion has focused on Metaphysics Z, Aristotle's fascinating and difficult investigation of substance , and to a lesser extent on H and Θ. The place of the central books within the larger project of First Philosophy in the Metaphysics has engaged scholars since antiquity, and that relationship has also been reexamined. In addition, scholars have been exploring the Metaphysics from various broader (...) perspectives—first, in relation to Aristotle's natural philosophy, his physics, biology, and psychology, and to the Organon, his so-called "logical" works, which include the Categories, Topics, and Posterior Analytics; and second, in relation to the broader philosophical tradition, both Plato before him and the ancient commentary tradition in late antiquity. (shrink)

This volume collects Late Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval appropriations of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, addressing the logic of inquiry, concept formation, the question whether metaphysics is a science, and the theory of demonstration.

Aristotle described the scientific explanation of universal or general facts as deducing them through scientific demonstrations, that is, through syllogisms that met requirements he first formulated of logical validity and explanatoriness. In Chapters 19-23, he adds arguments for the further logical restrictions that scientific demonstrations can neither be indefinitely long nor infinitely extendible through the interposition of new middle terms. Chapters 24-26 argue for the superiority of universal over particular demonstration, of affirmative over negative demonstration, and of direct negative demonstration (...) over demonstration to the impossible. Chapters 27 34 discuss different aspects of sciences and scientific understanding, allowing us to distinguish between sciences, and between scientific understanding and other kinds of cognition, especially opinion. Philoponus' comments on these chapters are interesting especially because of his metaphysical analysis of universal predication and his understanding of the notion of subordinate sciences. We learn from his commentary that Philoponus believed in Platonic Forms as inherent in, and posterior to, the Divine Intellect, but ascribed to Aristotle an interpretation of Plato's Forms as independent substances, prior to the Demiurgic Intellect. A very important notion from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics is that of the 'subordination' of sciences, i.e. the idea that some sciences depend on 'higher' ones for some of their principles. Philoponus goes beyond Aristotle in suggesting a taxonomy of sciences, in which the subordinate science is the same in genus as the superordinate, but different in species. (shrink)

BL Features of the new edition: The translation has been completely rewritten, and the commentary thoroughly revised in the light of recent scholarship There is an additional glossary, and extended bibliography The Posterior Analytics contains some of Aristotle's most influential thoughts in logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. The first book expounds and develops the notions of a demonstrative argument and of a formal, axiomatized science; the second discusses a cluster of problems raised by the axioms (...) or principles of such a science, and investigates in particular the theory of definition. (shrink)

For the second edition, the translation has been completely rewritten and the commentary has been thoroughly revised in the light of recent scholarship.

This translation of Thomas' paraphrase and analysis of Aristotle's philosophy of science is, unfortunately, mimeographed and bound in a paper cover. It lacks the introductory material which is needed to orient the reader philosophically and to specify the issues at stake; it also lacks notes giving the meanings of technical terms and comparing the exposition to Aristotle's own text. There is, however, a rather extensive index. The publication of this volume intensifies the historical problem whether commentaries such as this accurately (...) represent medieval conceptions of science. Recent volumes, such as A. C. Crombie's on Grosseteste, indicate that some thinkers at least were arriving at a mathematical conception of physical reality, which could not have been derived from exclusive attention to the Aristotelian corpus.--C. L. (shrink)

In this paper I examine two passages in Aristotle's 'Analytics' that deal with the topics of inductive knowledge, in general, and with the specific issue of "simultaneous learning", the grasping of two distinct, new pieces of information in a single act of thought. Interpreters have generally followed the treatment of these passages by Ross and Barnes, but difficulties have recently been raised for this interpretation, especially by Gifford. I attempt to deal with these difficulties and to show that the problems (...) with the received interpretation are not so great as to render it untenable. In doing so I develop an account of Aristotelian epagoge that Lesher, Hamlyn, and McKirahan originated, and show how this account enhances our understanding of the process by which, according to Aristotle, knowledge is acquired and applied. (shrink)

The present article aims to clear up three different, though connected, questions: 1st. The significance of the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 2nd. The significance of the distinction be tween two types of accident in the Posterior Analytics and in the Metaphysics, namely in its alleged relationship with the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 3rd. The meaning of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, namely from the point of view of its (...) putative identification with propria predicates. In the course of the analysis, the answers given to these three questions are the following : 1. By definition, the same predicate can never be a per se accident and a proprium, except incidentally, namely when regarded ‘at a certain moment’ or ‘in relation to something else’. In fact, despite Aristotle’s silence about the status of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, they have there its own peculiar logical location, namely under the first definition of ‘accident’. 2. The distinction between ‘strict’ accident and per se accident, on the one hand, and the double definition of ‘accident’, on the other, do not coalesce, though they partially overlap. The second definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics subsumes only ‘strict ’ accidents, while the first definition is generally valid for ‘strict’ accidents and per se accidents. 3. As far as an educated guess can go on historical matters, we can suppose that the second definition of ‘accident’ was conceived by Aristotle to cover the only kind of accidents recognised by him when writing the Topics, while, by that time, the first definition was thought merely as a alternative negative definition. However, it is the schema provided by the first definition that allows a precise technical definition of the two types of accidents, which nowhere can be found in Aristotle texts. In the final part of the article, we try to reconstruct this technical definition. (shrink)

일찍이 Kahn은 『분석론 후서』의 einai를 거론하며, 이곳 einai의 존재 용법이 아리스토텔레스의 형이상학적 사유와 동떨어져 있다고 지적한 바 있다. 그런데 이 지적은 첫째로 아리스토텔레스가 학문의 토대로서의 존재에 부여했던 중요성을 과소평가한 결과일 수 있고, 둘째로 분과 학문들과 형이상학이 맡는 일에 차이가 있음을 진지하게 고려하지 않은 평가일 수 있다고 여겨진다. 이에 본고는 위와 같은 지적에 일부 수정이 필요함을 보이고자 한다. 이를 위해 먼저 필자는, Kahn도 인정했듯, 『분석론 후서』 2권에서 학적 물음의 종류 구분에 언급된 einai가 ‘존재’ 용법으로 쓰인 것이 맞다는 점을 분명히 한다(2장). 그런 (...) 다음, 『분석론 후서』 1권에 언급된 ‘존재 가정’을 살펴보면서 다음을 설명한다. 즉, 『분석론 후서』가 개별 학문의 존재 가정을 포착하여 논증의 ‘원리’에 포함시킨 이유 중 하나는, 해당 학문 분야에서 원초적 대상의 존재가 그 학문이 탐구하는 대상들 전체의 질서를 지탱하는 토대임을 강조하고자 했기 때문이다(3장). 이어서 필자는 개별 학문의 과제는 자신의 분야 내에서 원초적 대상의 존재에 대한 가정을 바탕으로 파생적 대상의 존재와 속성을 논증하는 일이지, 각종 분야의 탐구 대상들의 존재 방식을 포괄적으로 탐구하거나 그것들의 존재론적 지위를 논하는 일이 아니라는 점, 그리고 후자는 보편적 존재론으로서 형이상학이 수행하는 일이라는 점을 보인다(4장). 이상의 논의를 통해 본고는 만일 『분석론 후서』의 존재 용법이 특이하다면, 이는 학문의 존립 기반을 강조하고자 했던 아리스토텔레스의 의중, 그리고 보편적 존재론을 분과 학문들이 아닌 형이상학의 과제로 할당겠다는 그의 취지가 이 존재 용법에서 드러나기 때문일 것이라고 해석한다. (shrink)

: Aristotle's metaphysics has stimulated intense renewed debate in the past twenty years. Much of the discussion has focused on Metaphysics Z, Aristotle's fascinating and difficult investigation of substance (ousia), and to a lesser extent on H and Θ. The place of the central books within the larger project of First Philosophy in the Metaphysics has engaged scholars since antiquity, and that relationship has also been reexamined. In addition, scholars have been exploring the Metaphysics from various (...) broader perspectives—first, in relation to Aristotle's natural philosophy, his physics, biology, and psychology, and to the Organon, his so-called "logical" works, which include the Categories, Topics, and Posterior Analytics; and second, in relation to the broader philosophical tradition, both Plato before him and the ancient commentary tradition in late antiquity. (shrink)

In 1913 Pierre Duhem published a lecture in which he summarized his then startling discovery that Galileo owed a great deal to medieval scholastic natural philosophers. The result of this discovery was not only to establish the history of medieval science as an autonomous scholarly discipline, but also to initiate intensive research into the background and sources of Galileo's work. No scholar has contributed more in recent years to this research than William Wallace. His Prelude to Galileo and his Galileo (...) and His Sources have gone a long way toward solving a number of problems concerning Galileo's connection to the medieval tradition. In two important new books, Wallace takes this research another step forward by documenting Galileo's participation in the commentary tradition on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. (shrink)

It may come as a surprise to readers familiar with the life and work of the Arts Master that he discusses the Eucharist at all. As he likes to remind us, theological topics are generally out of his wheelhouse. Even so, in his Questions on the “Metaphysics” of Aristotle (QM) 4.6, Buridan takes the sacrament of the Eucharist as a key data point in his discussion of Aristotle’s categories. In the Eucharist, the accidents of the bread and wine—their color, (...) texture, and so on—remain intact, but the underlying substance is transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Accordingly, God can preserve accidents independent of their underlying substance. Therefore, for our part we can use abstract accidental terms, like whiteness, without connoting any substances, like communion bread. Moreover, it follows that, contrary to Aristotle, substance and the accidental categories are not the most general genera. Instead, being (ens) is, as Buridan concludes. Here, I trace Buridan’s thought on the metaphysical and semantic matters of substance in light of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is for him not only a theological truth, but a metaphysical and semantic datum as well. I conclude by asking why Buridan did not take any and all questions about the Eucharist to be out of his ken. What does this tell us about his attitude toward theology?This paper also includes, as an appendix, the first ever English translation of the question under discussion (QM 4.6): “Does the term being [ens] signify substances and accidents by one single concept or notion?”. (shrink)

The aim of this book is twofold: first, to arrive at a coherent interpretation of Aristotle's account of definition in APo. 2.1-10; and second, to show how what Aristotle says there sheds light on the way in which per se attributes belong to their subjects.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle’s “De Interpretatione”: Contradiction and Dialectic by C. W. A. WhitakerEugene GarverC. W. A. Whitaker, Aristotle’s “De Interpretatione”: Contradiction and Dialectic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. x + 235. Cloth, $60.00.Traditionally, the De Interpretatione is placed in the Organon between the Categories and the Prior Analytics. Where the Categories is about single terms and the Analytics about inferences, the De Interpretatione is about propositions. That traditional view is (...) presupposed by most contemporary studies of the work, which “concentrate on a small number of passages, which have been treated as isolated oases of philosophical interest in an otherwise barren work,” highlights which include “Aristotle’s semantic theory of philosophy of language” in the first chapter, the first four “linguistic chapters,” and chapter 9 on the Sea Battle (1). I suppose that the square of opposition could be added to Whitaker’s list.Whitaker, in this republication of a doctoral dissertation, wants to challenge both the traditional view and the contemporary concentration by instead studying the work as a coherent whole, whose subject, it turns out, is not propositions after all but “contradictory pairs, which are central to the working of dialectic” (2). The book then proceeds through the De Interpretatione, chapter by chapter. If he succeeds, the De Interpretatione will henceforth be read as preparation for the Topics, rather than for the Analytics. There are also three appendices examining the use of such contradictory pairs in Metaphysics IV, the Topics, and the Posterior Analytics.Thus, the first five chapters of the De Interpretatione explain the nature of assertions, name and verb, and “before that, how language is related to thought and to the real world, and how it is that utterances can make claims about things which are true or false” (8). Where names, verbs, and propositions are part of our ordinary understanding of language, contradictory pairs are not, but are a philosophical understanding of a linguistic structure that has a specifically philosophical, dialectical, purpose. The rest of the De Interpretatione, from chapter 6 on, is the examination of contradiction. Chapters 7–9 classify contradictory pairs by different criteria. Each of these chapters isolates an exception to “the rule that, in every contradictory pair, one member is true and the other false” (79). Chapter 7 looks at the first exception to the rule, “non-universal statements about universals” (91). Whitaker’s project looks good here, since he then shows the dialectical uses of such propositions, and denies their value for the deductive logic of the Analytics. Similarly, in Chapter 8 Aristotle looks at “apparently simple assertions... which are not single” (105), which also have important uses in dialectic. Finally, chapter 9 looks at the third exception to the rule, future singular assertions. One payoff of this book is to place the sea battle discussion in its Aristotelian context. [End Page 459] Whitaker says that most discussions of the sea battle assume that what is at stake is what he calls the “Principle of Bivalence” in which every assertion is either true or false. He instead insists that it is contradictory pairs, not single assertions, that are being tested by future contingents. He thus concludes: “Dialectic is a universal discipline, and its questioning can cover any subject where a question can be posed which has a right and a wrong answer. Chapters 7 to 9... demonstrate that there are limits to the universality of dialectic” (128).Whitaker follows the De Interpretatione chapter by chapter in the remainder of the book. He shows how the later chapters assist the dialectician in “sorting assertions into contradictory pairs” (181). And just as De Interpretatione begins with a consideration of the relation of language, thought, and the world, so it ends by showing the connection between contradictory propositions and opposed beliefs.Whitaker rarely strays from the De Interpretatione to show how our understanding of dialectic is improved by attention to this prerequisite. When he does, for example in a very short discussion of the relation of problems and propositions in the Topics, the results are illuminating. I would have liked more. This book should be useful to the growing numbers of scholars interested in Aristotle’s art of dialectic... (shrink)

This is a clear, accurate translation of Books I and VIII of Aristotle's Topics, with a philosophical commentary on these books and additional extracts from both Books II and III, and a related Aristotle work. It is ideal for students, especially those who do not know Greek.

Book synopsis: Aristotle's probing inquiry into some of the fundamental problems of philosophy, The Metaphysics is one of the classical Greek foundation-stones of western thought, translated from the with an introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred in Penguin Classics. The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hard-headed view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things (...) lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy. Hugh Lawson-Tancred's lucid translation is accompanied by a stimulating introduction in which he highlights the central themes of one of philosophy's supreme masterpieces. Aristotle (384-22 BC) studied at the Academy of Plato for 20 years and then established his own school and research institute, 'The Lyceum'. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy and are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. (shrink)

Aristotle, great Greek philosopher, researcher, reasoner, and writer, born at Stagirus in 384 BCE, was the son of Nicomachus, a physician, and Phaestis. He studied under Plato at Athens and taught there ; subsequently he spent three years at the court of a former pupil, Hermeias, in Asia Minor and at this time married Pythias, one of Hermeias's relations. After some time at Mitylene, in 343?2 he was appointed by King Philip of Macedon to be tutor of his teen-aged son (...) Alexander. After Philip's death in 336, Aristotle became head of his own school, the Lyceum at Athens. Because of anti-Macedonian feeling there after Alexander's death in 323, he withdrew to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Nearly all the works Aristotle prepared for publication are lost; the priceless ones extant are lecture-materials, notes, and memoranda. They can be categorized as follows: I Practical: Nicomachean Ethics; Great Ethics ; Eudemian Ethics; Politics; Economics ; On Virtues and Vices. II Logical: Categories; Analytics ; Interpretation; Refutations used by Sophists; Topica. III Physical: Twenty-six works including astronomy, generation and destruction, the senses, memory, sleep, dreams, life, facts about animals, etc. IV Metaphysics: on being as being. V Art: Rhetoric and Poetics. VI Other works including the Constitution of Athens; more works also of doubtful authorship. VII Fragments of various works such as dialogues on philosophy and literature; and of treatises on rhetoric, politics and metaphysics. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle is in twenty-three volumes. (shrink)

Written over a period of thirty-five years, these essays explore the topics of causation, time, fate, determinism, natural teleology, different conceptions of the human soul, the idea of the highest good and the human significance of leisure. While most of the essays take as their starting-point some theme in Ancient Greek philosophy, they are meant not as exegesis but as distinctive and independent contributions to live philosophizing. Written with clarity, precision without technicality, and philosophical imagination, they will engage a wide (...) range of readers, including scholars and students of Ancient Greek philosophy and others working on more contemporary analytical concerns. (shrink)

This volume contains a close translation, suitable for students without a knowledge of Greek, of the seventh and eighth books of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a thorough and careful philosophical commentary. In these difficult books, which are central to his metaphysical system, Aristotle discusses the nature of perceptible reality. In particular, he discusses which of matter and form might be the basic reality of things, and he frequently contrasts his own view of form with the Platonic view. Several other (...) topics are treated which are of central importance to his metaphysics, such as the notions of essence and definition, the status of universals, and the concept of a unity. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in the study of induction. This paper aims at examining Philoponus’ treatment, with a focus on his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, which is an especially rich source of information on this topic. Following in Aristotle’s footsteps, Philoponus maintains that it is through induction that universal knowledge is achieved, but in his interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine he also introduces intriguing novelties. In particular, I argue that in some passages he treats induction as an (...) intellectual means of teaching and learning, that is, as a logical argument-form in which a universal conclusion is inferred from particular premises. In other passages, however, he treats induction as a sort of sense perception, specifically that which triggers the recovery of innate universal knowledge. (shrink)

Though Aristotle is universally acknowledged as having a mighty influence on the history of philosophy, large parts of his writings are often thought to be interesting to nobody except the historian. This includes those treatises known as the theoretical works (preeminently the Metaphysics, Physics, De Anima, and Posterior Analytics). However, the contributions in this book show that these old treatises are still profound resources for philosophical inquiry. Not only do they inform us about the origins of our ideas, (...) but equally they express insights that always stand in need of reinterpretation, and thus challenge our understanding. That challenge to understanding - and ultimately the desire for self-understanding, the desire to know what stands at the source of thinking itself - this was at the heart of the Greek ideal of philosophy, and some would say that this is still the task of the discipline. The essays included here cover a wide range of topics, including Aristotle's treatment of non-contradiction, the tension between his conceptions of knowledge and being, the complexity of the term 'potency,' and the relation between psychology and physics. (shrink)

During the past three decades, Aristotle studies have been significantly influenced by a series of ground-breaking investigations of the zoological works, especially the Historia animalium. As a result, contemporary Aristotle scholars have developed a clearer and more consistent interpretation of the zoology and have demonstrated its consonance with Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. This revolution in Aristotle studies was anticipated by the medieval natural philosopher Albertus Magnus. As the first thinker since Theophrastus to pursue an Aristotelian research program in the (...) life sciences, he interpreted Aristotle’s animal histories as a series of pre-demonstrative researches preparatory to causal explanation as prescribed in the Posterior Analytics and the Topics. The medieval anticipation of these recent developments in Aristotle studies provides a compelling comparison of the interpretation of Aristotle now and then. (shrink)

During the past three decades, Aristotle studies have been significantly influenced by a series of ground-breaking investigations of the zoological works, especially the Historia animalium. As a result, contemporary Aristotle scholars have developed a clearer and more consistent interpretation of the zoology and have demonstrated its consonance with Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. This revolution in Aristotle studies was anticipated by the medieval natural philosopher Albertus Magnus. As the first thinker since Theophrastus to pursue an Aristotelian research program in the (...) life sciences, he interpreted Aristotle’s animal histories as a series of pre-demonstrative researches preparatory to causal explanation as prescribed in the Posterior Analytics and the Topics. The medieval anticipation of these recent developments in Aristotle studies provides a compelling comparison of the interpretation of Aristotle now and then. (shrink)

During the past three decades, Aristotle studies have been significantly influenced by a series of ground-breaking investigations of the zoological works, especially the Historia animalium. As a result, contemporary Aristotle scholars have developed a clearer and more consistent interpretation of the zoology and have demonstrated its consonance with Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. This revolution in Aristotle studies was anticipated by the medieval natural philosopher Albertus Magnus. As the first thinker since Theophrastus to pursue an Aristotelian research program in the (...) life sciences, he interpreted Aristotle’s animal histories as a series of pre-demonstrative researches preparatory to causal explanation as prescribed in the Posterior Analytics and the Topics. The medieval anticipation of these recent developments in Aristotle studies provides a compelling comparison of the interpretation of Aristotle now and then. (shrink)

In 1978 the American Research Center in Egypt published a report on a project in "Medieval Islamic Logic" it was cosponsoring with the Smithsonian Institute. The report announced the project's goal to be "to produce critical editions of the Arabic text of Averroes' Middle Commentaries on Aristotle's logical works." The first of these editions, the Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Topics, appeared in 1979, and since that time the editions have appeared with impressive regularity: the MC on Aristotle's Categories in 1980; (...) the MC on Aristotle's De Interpretatione in 1981; the MC on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics in 1982; and the MC on Aristotle's Prior Analytics in 1983. The editor of all these commentaries is Charles E. Butterworth, with editorial assistance from Ahmad Abd al-Magid Haridi. The editions of these eight commentaries, when they are all published, will constitute the Arabic version of the middle commentaries of volume 1 of Harry A. Wolfson's carefully planned Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem. (shrink)

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the present commentary, here translated into English for the first time, Alexander (...) develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time, including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the Middle Ages and later. (shrink)

Frank A. Lewis presents a close study of book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of his most dense and controversial texts, commonly understood to contain his deepest thoughts on the definition of substance and related metaphysical issues. Lewis argues that Aristotle returns to the causal view of primary substance from his Posterior Analytics.

Actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient causality and teleology are among the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Aristotle's Revenge argues that these concepts are not only compatible with modern science, but are implicitly presupposed by modern science. Among the many topics covered are: the metaphysical presuppositions of scientific method; the status of scientific realism; the metaphysics of space and time; the metaphysics of quantum mechanics; reductionism in chemistry and biology; the metaphysics of (...) evolution; neuroscientific reductionism. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophy of science, so as to bring contemporary philosophy and science into dialogue with the Aristotelian tradition. (shrink)

This paper revisits Aristotle’s discussion of akrasia in NE VII. 1–10. I try to offer a scientific reading of the book, according to which NE VII. 1–10 closely instantiates the main guidelines of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. I propose that NE VII. 1–2, which aims to establish the fact that akrasia exists, corresponds to the ὅτι-stage of an Aristotelian scientific inquiry, and NE VII. 3–10, which aims to explain both the cause and the object of akrasia, corresponds to the διότι-stage (...) of the inquiry. (shrink)

Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, both in the analytic and continental traditions, metaphysics was deemed to be passé. The last few decades, however, have witnessed a remarkable growth of interest among analytic philosophers in various traditional metaphysical topics, such as modality, truth, causality, etc. which resulted in the emergence of various forms of analytic metaphysics. The new forms of metaphysics differ from its traditional forms mostly in their methodology and in the range of proposed (...) solutions to particular problems. Besides these and other differences, however, there are also many similarities and there are even some who intentionally develop traditional metaphysical themes using the contemporary analytical methods. All these developments call for detailed exploration, which is the general goal of the present publication Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic. The publication is the fruit of the conference which took place in Prague in 2010 and which had for its aim to bring together those willing to explore relations between the traditional and contemporary concerns, both from among the leading analytic philosophers working in metaphysics and the historians of philosophy devoted to the study of the metaphysical tradition. The specific focus of the conference was a re-examination of topics such as categories, metaphysical structure, substance and accident, existence, modalities, and predication. (shrink)

In the opening sentences of Book 2 of Posterior Analytics, Aristotle defines the four types of question that one can pose within the demonstrative science. In the edition by William D. Ross, the text reads as follows : τὰ ζητούμενά ἐστιν ἴσα τὸν ἀριθμὸν ὅσαπερ ἐπιστάμεθα. ζητοῦμεν δὲ τέτταρα, τὸ ὅτι, τὸ διότι, εἰ ἔστι, τί ἐστιν. ὅταν μὲν γὰρ πότερον τόδε ἢ τόδε ζητῶμεν, εἰς ἀριθμὸν θέντες, οἷον πότερον ἐκλείπει ὁ ἥλιος ἢ οὔ, τὸ ὅτι ζητοῦμεν. σημεῖον δὲ (...) τούτου· εὑρόντες γὰρ ὅτι ἐκλείπει πεπαύμεθα· καὶ ἐὰν ἐξ ἀρχῆς εἰδῶμεν ὅτι ἐκλείπει, οὐ ζητοῦμεν πότερον. ὅταν δὲ εἰδῶμεν τὸ ὅτι, τὸ διότι ζητοῦμεν, οἷον εἰδότες ὅτι ἐκλείπει καὶ ὅτι κινεῖται ἡ γῆ, τὸ διότι ἐκλείπει ἢ διότι κινεῖται ζητοῦμεν.The things we seek are equal in number to those we understand. We seek four things: the fact, the reason why, if it is, what it is. For when we seek whether it is this or this, putting it into a number, we seek the fact. Evidence for this: on finding that it is eclipsed we stop; and if from the start we know that it is eclipsed, we do not seek whether it is. When we know the fact we seek the reason why. (shrink)

"The twelve chapters of this volume all began their existence as contributions to workshops held between 2009 and 2011 by a Danish-Swedish research network called The Aristotelian Tradition: The reception of Aristotle's works on logic and metaphysics in the Middle Ages, headquartered in Gothenburg and funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Most of them were written by members of the network, some by invited speakers. While the volume amply illustrates the set of scholarly approaches characteristic of the (...) "Copenhagen School of Medieval Philosophy" (notably a strong philological foundation and an interest in ancient as well as medieval and Greek as well as Latin texts), its thematic diversity reflects the network's breadth of interests. What unites the chapters in this respect is simply a concern with different historical manifestations of Aristotelian thought on logical and metaphysical matters. The volume includes studies of texts by, among others, Apuleius, Boethius, Anonymus Aurelianensis III, Michael of Ephesus, Averroes, Anonymus Cantabrigiensis, Nicholas of Paris, Robert Kilwardby, Anonymus O, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Francisco Suárez, relating to themes and passages in Aristotle's Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics 1, Posterior Analytics 1, Sophistical Refutations and Metaphysics A and Z. The last two chapters consist of a new edition, with English translation and commentary, of the first part of a fiercely anti-Aristotelian work, which has been described as the starting-point for Renaissance Platonism and Aristotelianism alike: George Gemistos Plethon's On Aristotle's Departures from Plato."--. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I investigate the role of Aristotle's theory of science, and specifically the homogeneity criterion, for the set-up of Aristotle's metaphysics project as sketched in Met. IV, 1--3 and VI, 1. I argue that Aristotelian metaphysics takes shape through a dialectical argument stretching from Met. I to VI, 1. Along this path, both Aristotle's theory of science , and the Platonist competitor in metaphysics are constantly kept in view. They propel the argument at crucial stages. (...) The resulting metaphysics is compatible with Aristotle's theory of science, though it is not a direct application of it. Rather, metaphysics is a content-neutral complement to the content-specific sciences. The Platonist competitor remains refuted. Some of its central ideas and tools are nevertheless assimilated into Aristotelian metaphysics. ;Aristotle's postulate of a universal science of being seems to contradict a central requirement for a science: the homogeneity principle. According to the Posterior Analytics, every science has its specific subject matter , which it explores in terms of predicative content, and to which it is restricted. Being, does not constitute such a genos. Aristotle has to find a feature which can play a role for 'being' that is analogous to 'genos' in a special science. Aristotle finds it in the pros hen notion . Pros hen makes the content-neutral, focal structure of being transparent. It is not an extension of synonymy . With the help of pros hen, Aristotle can construct a content-neutral universal metaphysics project, solving the puzzles which arose in III, 1/2 precisely as a conflict between the questions which metaphysics should address and the homogeneity criterion for content-specific sciences. His theory of science remains fully intact for the sciences for which it was designed. The objections against Platonist metaphysics remain in place as well. The content-neutral analysis of being meets the expectations formulated for metaphysics in I, 1/2, on the basis of endoxa. Aristotle's project is constituted by what is commonly called 'general metaphysics'. It includes a consideration of the divine. (shrink)

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Laval University, 1999.