V.1. livres I-IV V.2. livres V-VII. V.3 livres VIII-X.

t. 1. Sections I à X -- t. 2. Sections XI à XXVII -- t. 3. Sections XXVIII à XXXVIII et index.

« La métaphysique d’Aristote n’est, au sens aristotélicien, dialectique et par là incapable de tout achèvement déductif, que parce qu’elle est une métaphysique du mouvement, c’est-à-dire de la scission. » Le propos de l’auteur est simple : sans vouloir rajouter et apporter du nouveau sur Aristote, il tente au contraire de désapprendre tout ce que la tradition a ajouté à l’aristotélisme primitif. Car l’aristotélisme que nous connaissons est surtout celui des commentateurs grecs. L’image ainsi révélée est celle d’un Aristote aporétique, (...) mais « cette voix qui parle est celle plus fraternelle qui continue de chercher en nous ce qu’est l’être et de se taire parfois ». (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

En este trabajo, presentado por primera vez en 1959 en forma de conferencia, el autor expone las líneas fundamentales del argumento que, poco después, desarrollará extensamente en El problema del ser en Aristóteles. Ya aquí encontramos afirmado que la investigación de Aristóteles conocida con el título de Metafísica se escinde en dos cuestiones igualmente originarias y que nunca llegan a converger, a saber, la cuestión del comienzo y la cuestión de la unidad. La permanente simultaneidad de ambas preguntas constituye lo (...) que es preciso reconocer como problemática aristotélica, y ello frente a la pretensión de los comentaristas sistematizantes, pero también de quienes intentan resolver la aludida escisión apelando a una supuesta evolución del pensamiento de Aristóteles. (shrink)

The dissertation seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of Frege's watershed work of logic, the 1879 Begriffsschrift . The treatise is the first since Aristotle's instauration of the discipline to have succeeded in completely recasting logic. Very generally stated, the dissertation aims at making explicit the conceptual origins of modern logic. To do that will require that each of the achievements of Concept-script be examined from one or more vantage points: either within the perspective of Frege's larger and guiding (...) ambition, that of providing a logical justification of arithmetic; or with respect to the horizon of modernity; or in relation to later developments in logical theory and the philosophy of language, developments stimulated, albeit not exclusively, by Frege's very work. The vantage point adopted in each case will depend on the nature of the topic and the extent to which it requires to be made explicit. One perspective will have preponderance, that of Frege's relationship to his early modern ancestors, a group that includes philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians. Since modernity is constituted in a nearly constant critical, if not polemical, relationship to the Ancients, they will also at times be drawn into the discussion. The elucidation of Frege's breakthrough work will be guided by the following thesis: Frege's attempt to justify arithmetic logically and the fine work of clarification he produced in actualizing this project; his discovery of function-theoretic logic and his fashioning of a concept-script ; and his critique of natural language and the attendant semantics developed over the course of that critique constitute an unfolding and an extension of the primacy of universal method over ontology that is the signature of modern inquiry. (shrink)

In his 1910 book On the principle of contradiction in Aristotle, Jan Łukasiewicz claims that syllogistic is independent of the principle of contradiction . He also argues that Aristotle would have defended such a thesis in the Posterior Analytics. In this paper, we first show that Łukasiewicz's arguments for these two claims have to be rejected. Then, we show that the thesis of the independence of assertoric syllogistic vis-à-vis PC is nevertheless true. For that purpose, we first establish (...) that there is no possibility to account for Aristotle's original views on syllogistic without using per impossibile deductions. At last, following an idea due to Smith 1983, we prove that there is a complete reconstruction of assertoric syllogistic using ecthesis instead of reductio ad absurdum. Contrary to what is claimed in Smith 1983, we show that Smith's system SE has to be improved for such a reconstruction. This results in an ecthetic system which is complete with respect to syllogistic arguments, not explosi.. (shrink)

En este trabajo se intenta explicar aquello que Heidegger dijo de Suárez en Ser y Tiempo, es decir, se intenta explicar qué papel juega Suárez en la Historia de la Metafísica, particularmente en cómo lo que en origen era un problema pasa a tornarse en una disciplina: la Ontología; y cómo también las consecuencias, que se derivan de la posición de Suárez y especificamente su forma de entender el conceptus entis, marcan el futuro de la Metafísica moderna.

Un dialogue est un logos (discours, propos, argument) qui va d'un interlocuteur a un autre. Cet echange d'idees, s'il veut etre fructueux, s'appuie sur un principe tres simple: comme le dialogue n'est pas un monologue, on dialogue avec quelqu'un; et on dialogue sur quelque chose. C'est le cas des travaux qui composent ce volume. L'interlocuteur privilegie est Pierre Aubenque. Ses travaux, son activite en tant qu'enseignant, ses prises de position sur des sujets tres divers ont suscite, de la part (...) de ses disciples, collegues et amis, une veritable envie de dialoguer avec lui, un desir de suivre son exemple (car Pierre Aubenque a toujours dialogue avec les Anciens, notamment avec Aristote). Les auteurs de ces reflexions ont ainsi voulu demontrer que le dialogue instaure pendant plus de vingt ans par le Directeur du centre Leon Robin (Universite de Paris IV), reste toujours ouvert. (shrink)

A fresh look at Aristotle's political theory with attention to the resonance of his thought for contemporary concerns.

This book will remain timeless in its study of Aristotle's objective grasp of reality. The book's uniqueness lies in its aim of letting Aquinas himself speak on the subject of metaphysics. The work embraces both a history of philosophy and Aristotle's subsequent reasoning toward God as pure act.

En De Interpretatione 16a 4-6, Aristote écrit que « ce qui est dans la voix est symbole des affections qui sont dans l'âme. » Ce terme de « symbole » n'est pas aussi clair qu'il le paraît d'abord, ainsi que le montre une analyse de l'usage qu'Aristote en fait dans ce passage et dans d'autres textes . En confrontant ces textes et en tenant compte de l'histoire du mot « σύμβoλoν » dans le grec antérieur et contemporain d'Aristote, il est (...) possible de reconstituer les éléments d'une doctrine aristotélicienne du langage et de lier cette doctrine d'Aristote à ses préoccupations de biologiste et à sa compréhension de la structure du temps.In De Interpretatione 16 a 4-6, Aristotle writes that "what is in the voice is a symbol of the affections that are in the soul." This term "symbol" is not as clear as it seems at first glance, as can be shown in an analysis of the way Aristotle uses it in this passage and elsewhere . Comparing these texts and taking into account the history of the word "σύμβoλoν" in Greek before Aristotle and in his own time, it is possible to reconstruct the elements of an aristotelian doctrine of language and to relate this doctrine to his studies in biology and to his theory concerning the structure of time. (shrink)

In this paper we first show that Robin Smith’s ecthetic system SE for Aristotle’s assertoric syllogistic is not complete, despite what is claimed by Smith. SE is then not adequate to establish that ecthesis allows one to dispense with indirect or per impossibile deductions in Aristotle’s assertoric logic. As an alternative to SE, we then present a stronger system EC which is adequate for this purpose. EC is a nonexplosive ecthetic system which is shown to be sound and (...) complete with respect to all valid syllogistic arguments with a consistent set of premises. (shrink)

I would like to start with a historical question or, more precisely, a question pertaining to the history of science itself. It is a widely accepted idea that Aristotelism has been an obstacle to the emergence of modern physical science, and this was for at least two reasons. The first one is the cognitive role Aristotle is supposed to have attributed to perception. Instead of considering perception as an origin of error, Aristotle thinks that our senses provide us (...) with a reliable image of the external world. The perceptive knowledge is a kind of knowledge in its own right, and the theoretical knowledge is, in fact, the continuation of the perceptive knowledge in some way. The second reason is the presumed inability of the Aristotelian philosophers to apply mathematics to the physical world. This was a formidable obstacle because modern physics came to be but as a mathematical physics. Aristotelianism had therefore to be, so to speak, superseded by the Platonic movement that originated in Florence around Ficino in order to give modern physics the conditions of its appearance. Galileo had to say that “Nature is written with mathematical letters” and Descartes that “our senses do not teach us what things are, but to what extent they are useful or harmful to us”. Alexandre Koyré is right to consider Galilean physics to be basically Platonic. The theoretical justification Aristotle offers for the impossibility of a convergence between mathematics and physics seems to be based on some fundamental features of his philosophy, i.e. he rejects the Platonic conception of a unique science, encompassing all things, and replaces it with the doctrine of the incommunicability of genera, whose corollary is that there is but one science for each genus. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Si remitimos la dialéctica a su punto de partida socrático, es decir, a un método puramente interrogativo, hemos de comprender la aporia en un sentido radical: lejos de deberse a factores subjetivos o existenciales tales como la ignorancia de la respuesta, la aporia propiamente dicha es una cuestión que objetivamente no se puede decidir, pero que sin embargo, paradójicamente, no puede ser superada sino a través de una decisión. Se pone de manifiesto aquí que la cuestión del sentido de (...) ser, básico en la metafísica desde Aristóteles, presenta este carácter de manera ejemplar. ABSTRACT: If we bring dialectics back to its socratic origin, i.e. to a purely interrogative method, we are at the same time led to take aporia in a radical far from being due to such subjective or existential factors as the ignorance of the answer, aporia is, strictly speaking, a question that objectively cannot be settled in one sens more than in another- to the effect that, paradoxically, it is a question upon which one has necessarily and only to decide. The point here is that the question, basic to metaphysics from Aristotle onwards, «What does mean being?» presents this character in a paradigmatic way. (shrink)

Based on Aristotle's analysis of the form and matter found in human thought, this book examines the three steps the mind takes in arriving at the truth: defining, judging, and reasoning. The author further analyzes the type of material demanded for scientific or demonstrative knowledge: universal, necessary, and proper propositions and applies this examination to modern science.

The -consensus of interpreters that gives books VII and VIII of the Politics a logical and chronological priority to books IV-VI and that claims that book VII advocates for an aristocratic regime must be abandoned. In fact, these last two books deal with questions which the legislator must know, but which fall short of any constitutional consideration. An image found in Book VII is illuminating: this book deals with the best conditions for life in the city and Aristotle compares (...) it to the material that the craftsman best arranges before giving his product its form. Prior for us, these considerations are therefore posterior by nature to the constitutional analyzes of books IV-VI. In light of the Aristotelian doctrine of two different kinds of priority, we can say that the manuscripts, which place books VII and VIII at the end of the Politics, adopt an Aristotelian order. (shrink)

In the last lines of Politics VII, 3, Aristotle states that the happy city acts nobly. This implies that the city has a practical life, and that this life has its end in itself. This claim seems to contradict the famous distinction, which has been made elsewhere by Aristotle, between the practical and theoretical lives. It is argued in this paper that there is, here, neither contradiction nor inconsistency in Aristotle’s conception of human action. Some readings, according (...) to which this passage deals with the role of the philosophers in the happy city, are also ruled out. The proposed solution consists in showing that this text refers to a broader conception of action, one that is beyond the sphere of human practical activities: any genuine praxis has its goal in itself, even when it produces external effects. (shrink)

Part of the contents: 0Happiness and Theôria in Books I and X of the Nicomachean Ethics / Eudaimonia and Theôria within the 0Nicomachean Ethics / The Meaning of Bios in Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics / Approximation and Acting for an 0Ultimate End / Eudaimonia, Theôria, and the Choiceworthiness of Practical Wisdom / Aristotle on the Choice of Lives: Two Concepts of Self-Sufficiency / Eudaimonia and Contemplation in Aristotle’s Ethics / Theôria and Praxis in Aristotle’s Ethics / (...) The Private Moral Life of Aristotle’s Philosopher: A Defense of a Non-Intellectualist Interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics / Theoretical Life, Practical Life, and Happiness in Aristotle / The Best Life according to Aristotle : A Reconsideration / Theos, Theôria, and Therapeia in Aristotle’s Ethical Endings / Contemplation and Service of the God: The Standard for External Goods in Eudemian Ethics / 0Aristotelian Immortality.0. (shrink)

Claudine Tiercelin has shared with Hilary Putnam a criticism of various attempts to naturalize intentionality and a criticism of radical forms of anti-representationalism. Nevertheless, this agreement is accompanied by an important divergence concerning the value of the couple “representation/reality” for defining mind and knowledge after one has rejected reductive naturalism and anti-representationalism. In order to analyse this divergence, I resort to Peirce and to Aristotle.

This chapter contains sections titled: Bibliography.

In an evolutionist theory like that of Darwin, animal pleasure has a properly vital function in directing animals toward pleasant behaviors which also happen to be advantageous. The best example of this is probably sexual pleasure which contributes to the survival of species. Aristotelian fixism does not need such an analysis since Nature has provided living beings with an innate tendency to reproduce and pleasure cannot have an adaptative function, because adaptation is given to animals once and for all and (...) cannot improve. The idea that pleasure induces an animal to adopt some useful behavior by trials and errors is unacceptable to Aristotle. Animals, on the other hand, being deprived of the perception of the good and the beautiful because they do not partake in reason, do not get pleasure from things in the world but in a coincidental way : the odor of the hare is pleasant to the dog because it is associated, in the dog’s perception, to the fact that dogs do eat hares. Far from being pleasant by itself, the odor of the hare is not attractive at all for a fed up dog. It remains for pleasure to be the sign of the good functioning of the organism, that is an hymn to the perfection of Nature. (shrink)

Un passé marqué de discontinuités : même pour en rester à notre histoire, celle de l’Occident, largement comprise, la théologie a connu des modifications importantes quant à la tâche qu’on lui impartit ou peut lui reconnaître, et du coup quant à ses formes et à son lieu institutionnel. Par-delà ce qui lui vient des Grecs, Platon, Aristote, les Stoïciens, la théologie s’est d’abord développée, en christianisme, avec l’institutionnalisation de cette nouvelle forme de religion qu’il cristallise au coeur de l’Antiquité tardive. (...) Aux temps des Réformes, catholique ou protestante, elle va se développer – nouvelle modification – en lien avec une volonté et une nécessité de légitimer un système de croyance donné. Le statut, la tâche et la fonction de la théologie a été enfin l’objet de reformulations dont nous dépendons encore aujourd’hui, pour une grande part, à la suite des Lumières, à l’ombre de Kant et en articulation avec le déploiement positif d’une histoire. Mais est-ce toujours pertinent ?A past marked by discontinuties: even when we limit ourselves to our own history, that of the Occident broadly seen, theology has undergone important changes in the task assigned to it or recognized for it and, consequently, in its forms and institutional locus. Apart from what theology inherited from the Greeks - Plato, Aristotle, the Stoicists – the field first developed in Christianity with the institutionalization of this new form of religion that crystallizes at the heart of Late Antiquity. During the Reformation – both Catholic and Protestant – theology was to develop – in relation to a will and a necessity to legitimize a given system of belief. Finally, the status, task and the function of theology were the object of reformulations that still affect us today in great part as a consequence of the Enlightenment, in the shadow of Kant and articulated with the positive unfolding of a history. But, is this still pertinent? (shrink)

A review of a bibliographical register of medieval Aristotle commentators.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Principles of Physics The Science of Natural Beings Motion, Causal Interaction, and Causational Synonymy Aristotelian Kinematics Aristotle's Theory of the Continuum The Causes of Elemental Motions Unmoved Movers Bibliography.

Cet article offre une reconstruction de la théorie aristotélicienne de l’humour, tant descriptive que normative. Dans une première partie, surtout centrée sur le troisième livre de la Rhétorique, je montre que l’idée d’ « incongruité » est centrale dans la compréhension de ce qui rend un mot ou une expression « drôle » ou « humoristique ». Dans une seconde partie, je tente de reconstruire cette théorie d’un point de vue normatif (en m’appuyant surtout sur le chapitre de l’Ethique à (...) Nicomaque dédié à la vertu du « sens de l’humour »), avec pour question centrale, « qu’est-ce qu’une bonne blague ». (shrink)

What is the best way to govern ourselves? The history of the West has been shaped by the struggle to answer this question, according to Pierre Manent. A major achievement by one of Europe's most influential political philosophers, Metamorphoses of the City is a sweeping interpretation of Europe's ambition since ancient times to generate ever better forms of collective self-government, and a reflection on what it means to be modern. Manent's genealogy of the nation-state begins with the Greek city-state, (...) the polis. With its creation, humans ceased to organize themselves solely by family and kinship systems and instead began to live politically. Eventually, as the polis exhausted its possibilities in warfare and civil strife, cities evolved into empires, epitomized by Rome, and empires in turn gave way to the universal Catholic Church and finally the nation-state. Through readings of Aristotle, Augustine, Montaigne, and others, Manent charts an intellectual history of these political forms, allowing us to see that the dynamic of competition among them is a central force in the evolution of Western civilization. Scarred by the legacy of world wars, submerged in an increasingly technical transnational bureaucracy, indecisive in the face of proliferating crises of representative democracy, the European nation-state, Manent says, is nearing the end of its line. What new metamorphosis of the city will supplant it remains to be seen. (shrink)

This volume integrates aspects of the Poetics into the broader corpus of Aristotelian philosophy. It both deals with some old problems raised by the treatise, suggesting possible solutions through contextualization, and also identifies new ways in which poetic concepts could relate to Aristotelian philosophy. In the past, contextualization has most commonly been used by scholars in order to try to solve the meaning of difficult concepts in the Poetics. In this volume, rather than looking to explain a specific concept, the (...) contributors observe the concatenation of Aristotelian ideas in various treatises in order to explore some aesthetic, moral and political implications of the philosopher's views of tragedy, comedy and related genres. Questions addressed include: Does Aristotle see his interest in drama as part of his larger research on human natures? What are the implications of tragic plots dealing with close family members for the polis? What should be the role of drama and music in the education of citizens? How does dramatic poetry relate to other arts and what are the ethical ramifications of the connections? How specific are certain emotions to literary genres and how do those connect to Aristotle's extended account of pathe? Finally, how do internal elements of composition and language in poetry relate to other domains of Aristotelian thought? The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context offers a fascinating new insight to the Poetics, and will be of use to anyone working on the Poetics, or Aristotelian philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

This collection deals with utopias in the Greek and Roman worlds, both in philosophy (with chapters on Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, Stoics and Cicero), and in other literary genres such as comedy (Aristophanes) and parody (Lucian) as well as histor.