Aristoteles (384-322 a.C.), es uno de los pensadores mas influyentes de la historia de la humanidad. Filosofo y cientifico, su obra incorpora una gran variedad de conocimientos que, a traves de la pedagogia directa, transmitio a sus alumnos. Metafisica es una obra magna del pensamiento occidental, compuesta de catorce libros -de los que presentamos una seleccion- representa un compendio de todo el saber aristotelico en el campo de la filosofia y, tambien, un elemento basico de la misma como ciencia del (...) saber y del conocimiento. Todos los problemas que ha debatido la metafisica hasta hoy tienen su origen en las ideas que Aristoteles plantea y desarrolla en este libro de libros. (shrink)

Reale's monumental work establishes the exact dimensions of Aristotle's concept of first philosophy and proves the profound unity of concept that exists in Aristotle's Metaphysics.

This paper wishes to make a contribution to the study of how seventeenth-century scholasticism adapted to the new intellectual challenges presented by the Reformation. I focus in particular on the theory of accidents, which Reformed scholastic philosophers explored in search of a philosophical understanding of the rejection of the Catholic and Lutheran interpretations of the Eucharist. I argue that the Calvinist scholastics chose the view that actual inherence is part of the essence of accidents because it was coherent with their (...) theology. In this paper, I bring to attention the Reformed scholastic philosophy which was taught in the Scottish universities in the first half of the seventeenth century, an area so far neglected by scholars. In so doing, I compare Scottish scholasticism with coeval Calvinist sources, and highlight the differences from authoritative Catholic and Lutheran philosophers. The conclusion is that Calvinist scholasticism, both Scottish and Continental, brought about fundamental changes in seventeenth-century metaphysics, which are coherent with a humanist interpretation of Aristotle, and anticipate some themes of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

No index or bibliography, but extensive, detailed endnotes. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Ably edited and translated from the 5th Italian edition by John R. Catan.

Richard Owen has been condemned by Darwinians as an anti-evolutionist and an essentialist. In recent years he has been the object of a revisionist analysis intended to uncover evolutionary elements in his scientific enterprise. In this paper I will examine Owen's evolutionary hypothesis and its connections with von Baer's idea of divergent development. To give appropriate importance to Owen's evolutionism is the first condition to develop an up-to-date understanding of his scientific enterprise, that is to disentagle Owen's contribution to the (...) modernization of typology and morphology. I will argue that Owen's Platonic essentialism is rhetorical and incongruous. On the contrary, an interpretation of the archetype based on Aristotle's biological works makes possible a new conception of type, based on a homeostatic mechanism of stability. The renewal of morphology hinges on homological correspondences and a homeostatic process is also the origin of serial and special homology. I will argue that special homology shows an evolutionary orientation insofar as it is a typically inter-specific character while serial homology is determined through an elementary usage of the categories of developmental morphology. (shrink)

The core of Hegelian idealism is the concept of dialectic, the soul of logic and the fundamental law of reality in all its forms. This dialectic is as vastly different from Platonic dialectic as the categories or pure concepts of the Transcendental Logic in the Critique of Pure Reason are from Plato’s ideas and Aristotle’s universals, and its character cannot be more plainly indicated than by this very contrast of the category with the Platonic idea and the Aristotelian universals.

Philodemus’ De signis is one of the classical texts of greatest semiotic interest. It reports the debate which arose between the Epicureans and an opposing school, usually identified as the Stoics, concerning semiotic inference. The Epicureans proposed to construct semiotic inferences based on generalizations resting on similarity, ultimately configuring their method as a form of induction. Their opponents attacked the Epicurean proposal in a twofold way: on the one hand, they argued that the Epicureans’ method intrinsically lacked cogency, invalidating their (...) inferences from a logical point of view. On the other, they criticized the notion of similarity, arguing that it is generally a vague notion, and in some cases impossible to implement, as when one is faced with unique cases. The debate is very complex and is divided into replies and rejoinders. The ultimate impression one gets is that the Epicureans were able, for the first time in antiquity, to propose a real method to construct semiotic inferences, even though the latter were subject to fallibility, while their opponents did not propose a method, but a test, “elimination,” able only to check the logical soundness of semiotic inferences. In doing so, they placed themselves in a tradition extending back to the theory of signs formulated – albeit in a significantly different way – by Aristotle. (shrink)

This volume brings together world-leading scholars on the thought of Averroes, the greatest medieval commentator on Aristotle but also a major scholar of Islam. The collection situates him in his historical context by emphasizing the way that he responded to the political situation of twelfth-century Islamic Spain and the provocations of Islamic theology. It also sheds light on the interconnections between aspects of his work that are usually studied separately, such as his treatises on logic and his legal writings. (...) Advanced students and scholars will find authoritative and insightful treatments of Averroes' philosophy, tackled from multiple perspectives and written in a clear and accessible way that will appeal to those encountering his work for the first time as well as to anyone looking for new critical approaches to Averroes and his thinking. (shrink)

Magic and religion are at the origin of the concept of money as a unit for measuring value. Actually, they determined the first forms money took: precious objects, engraved stones, amulets and talismans which conferred a special power, within a social group, on the one who possessed them. In time, this power came to include the power of acquisition in commercial terms, but its original ties with magic were never lost. Aristotle clearly saw the relationship between a certain concept (...) of money (in Politica) and a new ethical concept as a corrective for the imbalances within a social community (in Ethica Nicomachea). If we look closely, we see that this ethical concept is not in opposition to the former but emphasizes the double aspect of the idea of money in antiquity, an idea which has survived, with some modifications, in Christianity and the modern era. (shrink)

It is a curious feature of Hegelian studies in English that its practitioners seem incapable of tackling their subject without first disclaiming any adherence to the more metaphysical side of Hegel's thought, be it called “speculative metaphysics,” “dialectical logic” or whatever. I say “curious” because I doubt that the same scholars would feel obliged to enter an equivalent disclaimer at the head of a study on, say, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza or even Newton—even though all of these classics have a (...) metaphysical side at least as abstruse as any of Hegel's worse romantic excesses. Hegel himself, if he could witness the practice, would be flattered by it. He would not see it as an indication that “the problems of [his] logic remain alien and artificial to us in ways that the problems of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy do not” but, on the contrary, as a hidden acknowledgement that, whether for good or bad, his philosophy is still alive, still so close to our culture that we instinctively feel the need of exorcizing it ritually, like a demon capable of frightening us. (shrink)

It is a curious feature of Hegelian studies in English that its practitioners seem incapable of tackling their subject without first disclaiming any adherence to the more metaphysical side of Hegel's thought, be it called “speculative metaphysics,” “dialectical logic” or whatever. I say “curious” because I doubt that the same scholars would feel obliged to enter an equivalent disclaimer at the head of a study on, say, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza or even Newton—even though all of these classics have a (...) metaphysical side at least as abstruse as any of Hegel's worse romantic excesses. Hegel himself, if he could witness the practice, would be flattered by it. He would not see it as an indication that “the problems of [his] logic remain alien and artificial to us in ways that the problems of Cartesian and Kantian philosophy do not” but, on the contrary, as a hidden acknowledgement that, whether for good or bad, his philosophy is still alive, still so close to our culture that we instinctively feel the need of exorcizing it ritually, like a demon capable of frightening us. (shrink)

Diagoras and Theodorus are two of the atheists remembered in several catalogues of atheists in Antiquity, the first of which dates back to the 2nd century BC, and from then on invariably referredto by the ancients and to the present day as atheists. In fact, the atheism condemned in Athens had its roots in the pre-Socratic philosophical and scientific culture, whose fundamentally "materialistic" imprint is authoritatively testified to by Aristotle (MetaphysicsI 983b5-10). The philosophies of Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, (...) Diogenes of Apollonia, and of course the Atomists and Sophists offered, albeit in different ways, not only some important support for the critique of traditional divinities, but also for the philosophical foundations of atheism. Diagoras has nothing to do with this tradition; even some events in his life may at most merit the accusation of being impious, but not of being an atheist. heodore appears to be of a different cultural temperament, close not only to the culture of the Cyrenaic school, but also to that of the Cynics and the Sophists. We have not only references to his philosophical doctrines, but also clear evidence of his atheism, having dedicated himself to "radically eliminating common beliefs in the gods". In conclusion, while Diagora's name can safely be removed from the catalogues of atheists, Theodore's is rightly included. (shrink)

This is a translation of II Motore Immobile (Metafisica, libro XII), Traduzione intégrale, introduzione e commento by Giovanni Reale (Editrice La Scuola, Brescia, 4th Ed. 1971)- The author offers a unitary reading of the famous twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. The book is intended for students who wish to read the text itself of Aristotle’s, so that the introduction and commentary to the text and the summaries of the entire Metaphysics as well as the twelfth book gives (...) the student ample material to read the text intelligently. The work is aware of the current state of Aristotelian studies but does not intrude them into the commentary, because they should be reserved for more specialized work which the author has completed. (shrink)

Roberto Frega & Giovanni Maddelena – Can you recollect what the situation was concerning the study of pragmatism when you were in college? Richard J. Bernstein – I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from 1949 to 1951. At the time the “Hutchins College” was an unusual institution. The entire curriculum was fixed and it was organized around reading many of the great books of the Western tradition. From the time I arrived, I was reading Plato, (...) class='Hi'>Aristotle, Galileo, Darwin, Herodotus... (shrink)

We propose here the first translation into Portuguese of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s small treatise De Ente et Uno (1491). The translation is preceded by a brief presentation in which the work is contextualized within the scope of the thought of its young author and in the Florentine philosophical environment of the end of the Quattrocento. In the aftermath of the controversies between defenders of Plato and defenders of Aristotle, a quarrel brought by Greek and Byzantine intellectuals into (...) Italy, who exacerbated the differences between the two philosophers, there were also others who tried to show the essential concord between them, a purpose of which Pico’s treatise is one of the most expressive and relevant documents, seeking to prove the equivalence between Plato’s One and Aristotle’s Being. (shrink)

Summary The reception process of Aristotle's Mechanical Questions during the early modern period began with the publication of the corpus aristotelicum between 1495 and 1498. Between 1581 and 1627, two of the thirty-five arguments discussed in the text, namely Question XIV concerning the resistance to fracture and Question XVI concerning the deformation of objects such as timbers, became central to the work of the commentators. The commentaries of Bernardino Baldi (1581–1582), Giovanni de Benedetti (1585), Giuseppe Biancani (1615) (...) and Giovanni di Guevara (1627) gradually approached the doctrine of proportions of the Renaissance architects, some aspects of which deal with the strength of materials according to the Vitruvian conception of scalar building. These aspects of the doctrine of proportions were integrated into the Aristotelian arguments so that a theory of linear proportionality concerned with the strength of materials could be formulated. This very first theory of strength of materials is the theory to which Galileo critically referred in his Discorsi where he published his own theory of strength of materials. Economic and military constraints are determined as the fundamental reasons for the commentators’ commitment to developing a theory of strength of materials that later linked Galileo's work to the practical knowledge of the architects and machine-builders of his time. (shrink)

In the years following the death of Bernardino of Siena Giovanni of Capestrano was intensely involved with the tasks of his role as the main supporter of the cause of canonization. This project, which finally came to be realized in the Jubilee year of 1450, was close to his heart for both personal reasons and for the legitimating power that a Bernardino who had been proclaimed a saint would have for advancing the interests of the Observant movement. (...) Along with a feverish diplomatic activity carried out by Giovanni in the triangle of Siena-Aquila-Rome, he developed a role in the construction of the written memory of his Franciscan brother.1 He promoted the registration of miracles both before and after the... (shrink)

Bernardino of Siena and Giovanni of Capestrano, both preachers and among the most relevant figures of the Observance, shaped that branch of the Franciscan Order during the first half of the fifteenth century. After Bernardino's death in 1444 Giovanni zealously promoted his friend's canonization, which occurred in 1450. The Observants' first sanctified friar signaled the official legitimacy of this branch of the Order and Giovanni subsequently tried to establish L'Aquila, Bernardino's place of death, as (...) the center of the Franciscan reform movement.By exploring the visual impact of Giovanni of Capestrano's mission and preaching north of the Alps, this contribution analyzes... (shrink)

This edition of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s “De ente et uno” (“On being and the one”) offers for the first time a key text for the reformation of metaphysics in Renaissance philosophy in German translation. The Latin text is added. The detailed introduction and careful commentary reveal the guiding points Pico has set with this work.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is best known for his Oratio, one of many works containing his promise to prove that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle are in agreement. Pico never fulfilled this promise, however, and commentators have at times derided Pico’s concordist project. The present paper argues that Pico’s notion of concordia was at least partly inspired by a jurisprudential habit derived from his early training in canon law. After examining Pico’s explicit but dispersed statements on concordia, (...) I then consider the circumstantial evidence for a jurisprudential origin to Pico’s project. As the habits and dispositions of Renaissance exegetes differed significantly from those of present-day interpreters of the history of philosophy, there is merit in looking beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to understand Pico’s attempted concordia of Plato and Aristotle. An appreciation of this context mitigates the negative assessments of his enterprise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 249 Girolamo Balduino: Ricerche sulla logica della Scuola di Padova nel Rinascimento. By Giovanni Papuli. (Bark Lacerta, Universith di Bari, Pubblicazioni dell'lstituto di filosofia, 12, 1967. Pp. 313. no price.) The philosophers at the University of Padua during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance arc attracting much renewed interest. This study makes accessible again the logical philosophy of Girolamo Balduino, professor at Padua during the second (...) quarter of the sixteenth century. Like other thinkers of his period, 13alduino follows the logic of Aristotle, and looks for progress within the ancient and mediaeval tradition, not for radically new doctrines. He continues the traditional interpretation of Aristotle by Averroes, for whom logic is only an instrumental habitus, a tool or method of demonstration. About the final contribution of the school of Padua to the improvement of Aristotelian logic was the doctrine of regressive demonstration, where demonstration terminates in or discloses the definition. Zabarella's well-known teaching on this point seems to be derived entirely from Balduino. Contrary to the interpretation of Cassirer, followed by Randall, this regressive demonstration is not a universal method of inquiry and is not at all like, and not the historical source of, the new method of Galileo. Papuli's book is solidly based on the original Latin texts, in notes, which are of great value in view of the fact that Balduino's works have been out of print since 1573. Not all of Papuli's interpretations are beyond criticism (e.g., p. 296), but he has done a service in enabling us to reestablish contact with one of the last significant commentators on Aristotle's logic. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado Documents sur la vie de Jules-Cdsar Vanini de Taurisano. By Emile Namer. (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, n.d.=Univcrsith degli Studi di Bari, Pubblicazioni delFIstituto di Filosofia, II serie, Testi e Documenti, I. Pp. 196+22 facsimile illustrations) Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585-1619) ranks with Giordano Bruno as a modern hero of freedom of philosophical expression. He was tortured and then burned at the stake in Toulouse at the age of thirty-four, because of the unorthodoxy of his views. For this reason, he has drawn more attention than is perhaps deserved on the basis of his rather mediocre writings, which are little more than a tissue of plagiarisms culled from Pomponazzi, Cardano, J. C. Scaliger, and others. In this volume, Emile Namer has collected the scattered documents dealing with Vanini's life and activities. This is a valuable service, for it should enable scholars to disentangle fact from fiction and reality from myth. There has been so much heated discussion regarding Vanini that it is now time that someone should attempt to establish the precise facts and to reevaluate Vanini's place in intellectual history. In the past, writings about him have been governed more often by emotion than by reason. Namer prints documents from Naples, London, Paris, Simancas, and Toulouse. Some of these have been printed before in various journal articles, but it is valuable to have them all together in a single volume. In addition, he prints relevant excerpts concerning--as one of them put it--le douzi~me apostre de Satan, including material from Mersenne, Garasse, and others. He also includes a series of facsimiles of sample pages from the documents which he prints. All in all Namer's work is competently 250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY done, though perhaps a bit more annotation to put the documents in historical perspective would have been desirable. In any case this little volume must be one of the bases for any future serious biographical or interpretative studies dealing with Vanini. Moreover, it shouM also be useful for scholars dealing with more general questions of seventeenth-century intellectual, religious, and social history. Unfortunately, there is no index, nor bibliography of earlier literature on Vanini, and the Introduction is perhaps too brief to orient the reader who has little previous knowledge of Vanini. CHARLES B. SCHMITT University oJ Leeds Tommaso Campanella: Renaissance Pioneer o[ Modern Thought. By Bernardino M. Bonansea. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1969. Pp. xi 421. $14.50) This excellent critical study of the life and... (shrink)

Il neotrascendentalismo di Giovanni Emanuele Barié - Giovanni Emanuele Barié, appointed Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Milan University in 1937, is one of the most neglected figures in Italian philosophy of the last century. An exponent of late Italian idealism, it could be argued that only through his work, alongside that of others like Bernardino Varisco, Pantaleo Carabellese and Vito Fazio Allmayer, was Italian idealism able to reach full theoretical maturity. Born in Milan in 1894, before going (...) to university, Barié displayed great courage on the battlefield during the first world war. On his return, he first studied Law and then took a second degree in Philosophy under Piero Martinetti. In 1933, his La spiritualità dell’essere e Leibniz enabled him to obtain a university teaching post, first in Genoa, later in Rome and, finally, in Milan in the chair previously occupied by his mentor. The first period of Barié’s work is characterized by a re-evaluation of the Kantian a priori against the reductionist perspective of contemporary thought. Books like La posizione gnoseologica della matematica and Oltre la Critica belong to this stage in his life. From 1933, Barié started on an interpretation of Hegel with the intention of toning down the transcendental aspects of Kant’s and Martinetti’s thought. His most important writings from this period are L’io trascendentale and his last work Il concetto trascendentale , which came out in the same year the philosopher committed suicide. (shrink)

The following essays focus on one of the most important figures in the religious history of the later middle ages. Giovanni of Capestrano is in one sense familiar to many, above all to scholars and students of Franciscan history. The story of the friar from Abruzzo, one of the 'four pillars' of the Observance, appears in every standard account of the Order's history: his career as a jurist, his conversion and tutelage under Bernardino, his fierce advocacy for the (...) Observants, his long preaching tour north of the Alps and his role in the crusade of 1456. And for centuries that story has been the subject of progressively more refined scholarship, from Luke Wadding in the seventeenth century to Johannes Hofer and... (shrink)

The Sienese Bernardino Albizeschi, the acclaimed Franciscan preacher, theologian and missionary was a key figure in the promulgation of the Observant movement in Central and Northern Italy. His relatively quick canonization only six years after his death was the result of the joint efforts of the Republic of Siena, princes and signori from different parts of Europe and the Franciscans, including Giovanni da Capestrano, general vicar of the Cismontan Observant family, who, among several other tasks related to the (...) canonization, was active in the registration of the miracles of his predecessor. A number of sources testify to his veneration in... (shrink)

This paper aims first and foremost to unravel and clarify an interesting 17th century controversy around superposition in projectiles, which allegedly existed between the French Jesuit Honoré Fabri and the Italian physicist and astronomer Giovanni Alfonso Borelli. This conflict – initially described by the English mathematician John Wallis in a letter from 1670 to the secretary of the Royal Society – has been erroneously identified with Fabri's Dialogi physici (1669), a work written in response to Borelli's De vi percussionis (...) (1669). In fact, this “conflict” was nothing but Wallis's account of a contradiction between Borelli's above mentioned work and Fabri's Tractatus physicus de motu locali from 1646, while Fabri's 1669 work expressed views very different from those contained in his Tractatus physicus. I will try here to reconstruct Fabri's change of heart between 1646 and 1669 concerning projectiles and superposition, while tracing the real bone of contention between (the later) Fabri and Borelli – superimposing contrary motions – to its Aristotelian origins. My analysis will lead me to problematize the way modern historians usually interpret the relation between Aristotle's physical thinking and projectile theories of early modern theoreticians (e.g. Nicollò Tartaglia's). (shrink)

In this paper I compare Philoponus’s account of the laws of conversion for categorical and modal propositions with Alexander’s exposition of the same topic. I argue that Philoponus’s main source was Alexander’s commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics and that Philoponus had no access to independent sources to reconstruct Theophrastus’s proof for the conversion of universal negative propositions. I suggest that the different solutions that Alexander and Philoponus offer to the puzzles of the doctrine of the laws of conversion depend (...) on the two commentators’ different exegetical strategies. Alexander tries to solve the puzzles by means of doctrines, which Aristotle expounded elsewhere. Philoponus instead interprets Aristotle’s passage as implying a hierarchy among propositions - a doctrine which is not explicitly present in Aristotle’s text. (shrink)

The October 2016 publication of the 2015 convegno on Peter of John Olivi begins with a fine survey of Provence and Languedoc in Olivi's time. J. Chiffoleau, with C. Lenoble, supplies the reader with much detail and some summary, along with abundant reference, on Olivi's home turf. In the come and go of life religious and lay, Olivi saw to critical support for business while trying to stabilize Franciscan life. He did very well by both. Chiffoleau finishes his pages on (...) Olivi's days by suggesting that Olivi had better to do around Narbonne than in Paris.Tiziana Suarez-Nani offers thoughts and examples of Peter Olivi's "spiritual philosophy". That he offers Aristotle little esteem we know; that Olivi... (shrink)

Here we study polysemy as a potential learning bias in vocabulary learning in children. Words of low polysemy could be preferred as they reduce the disambiguation effort for the listener. However, such preference could be a side-effect of another bias: the preference of children for nouns in combination with the lower polysemy of nouns with respect to other part-of-speech categories. Our results show that mean polysemy in children increases over time in two phases, i.e. a fast growth till the 31st (...) month followed by a slower tendency towards adult speech. In contrast, this evolution is not found in adults interacting with children. This suggests that children have a preference for non-polysemous words in their early stages of vocabulary acquisition. Interestingly, the evolutionary pattern described above weakens when controlling for syntactic category (noun, verb, adjective or adverb) but it does not disappear completely, suggesting that it could result from a combination of a standalone bias for low polysemy and a preference for nouns. (shrink)

The studies of É. Évrard, recently published by M.-A. Gavray, are high quality works which allow to immerse oneself in the context of the Platonic-Aristotelian school of Alexandria in Egypt throughout the sixth century AD. They mostly focus on the figure and work of Joannes Philoponus, with specific attention to the compositional technique of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics and of On the Eternity of the World against Aristotle. Despite being strongly critical of the Stagirite on some points, (...) also due to his Christian faith, Philoponus deeply assimilated Aristotelian methods, lexicon and concepts. He therefore uses this legacy in his commentary on the first chapter of the biblical text of the book of Genesis on the creation of the universe, of living species and of the human being. This work by Philoponus provides a first example of Christian Aristotelianism before the well-known one of the medieval Scholasticism. (shrink)