Esta traducción al español corresponde a la intervención oral del Profesor Enrico Berti en el Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici el 13 junio de 2017. Berti es profesor emérito de la Universidad de Padua, con ocasión de la publicación de su traducción de la Metafísica de Aristóteles en el 2017, en el encuentro de estudio La metafísica de Aristóteles, en el Instituto de Estudios Filosóficos de Nápoles. Considero que al hacerlo se contribuye a la divulgación de (...) esta nueva traducción entre la comunidad hispanohablante. (shrink)

It is common knowledge that modern political societies, and to even greater extent contemporary ones, are characterized by pluralism. The term is used to describe situations which contain within the same society individuals and groups associated by various religions, various cultures, and various ethical systems. This is the consequence of several historical phenomena of widespread influence, which began in modern epoch and has intensified in the contemporary era, such as secularization, emigration, the establishment of democratic regimes in an even-larger number (...) of states. The thesis defended here is that the function of what Aristotle called the endoxa today can be performed by human rights, that is by the statements contained in the great declarations of rights found in national constitutional documents and in charters of the great international organizations, such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Organization of African Unity, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, etc. (shrink)

I. In analytic philosophy, so-called 'univocalism' is the prevailing interpretation of the meaning of terms such as 'being' or 'existence', i.e. the thesis that these terms have only one meaning (see Russell, White, Quine, van Inwagen). But some analytical philosophers, inspired by Aristotle, maintain that 'being' has many senses (Austin, Ryle). II. Aristotle develops an argument in favour of this last thesis, observing that 'being' and 'one' cannot be a single genus, because they are predicated of their differences (Metaph. B (...) 3). III. But 'being' for Aristotle has also a unity, i.e. 'focal meaning', which coincides with substance (Metaph. Γ 2), and substance has not only an ontological priority, but also a logical priority, in respect to the other beings, as was shown by G. E. L. Owen. IV. This 'focal meaning' cannot be identified with primary substance, i.e. with the unmovable mover, as some interpreters pretend, because this latter has only an ontological, not a logical, priority in respect to the world. V. The impossibility of this interpretation results from Aristotle's rejection of an essence and a substance of being (Metaph. B 4), i.e. the rejection of what the Christian philosophers called esse ipsum subsistens. (shrink)

Enrico Berti has had a profound influence on the birth and development of Italian studies in ancient philosophy. His sizable work has shaped a great part of Italian studies on Aristotle and other ancient philosophers. To celebrate him and express their gratitude for his work, some of his disciples, under the impulse of the late Franco Volpi, have brought together a volume in his honour, requesting the participation of some foreign scholars particularly close to him. The volume comprises (...) essays by Pierre Aubenque, Jonathan Barnes, Terence H. Irwin, Tomás Calvo-Martínez, Jaap Mansfeld, Pierre Pellegrin, Gerhard Seel and Alejandro G. Vigo. The main themes are Aristotle's metaphysics and practical philosophy. A Selected Bibliography by E. Berti himself completes the volume."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

In connection with the ongoing celebration of Aristotle’s Year that has been announced by UNESCO, the Poznan Archaeological Reserve – Genius Loci organized a series of lectures “Walks with Aristotle” that refer to the famous name of the Peripatos school. This invitation has been accepted by one of the greatest scholars of Aristotle, Professor Enrico Berti from the University of Padua, who has been publishing for more than 50 years various studies on the philosophy of the Stagirite as (...) well as on the history of philosophy. Recently, his very instructive book, entitled Aristotle’s Profile, has appeared in Polish translation. Professor Berti’s presentation provides an overview of his most important achievements. Included in these are his forthcoming works: his new translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics as well as his monograph Aristotelismo which reconstructs the diverse interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrines through centuries: from logic to epistemology, from physics to psychology and zoology, from metaphysics to ethics and politics and lastly from rhetoric to poetics. (shrink)

La classificazione delle scienze di Pietro d'Abano costituisce un'interessante riformulazione della classificazione analoga, proposta da Aristotele in Metaph. VI, e della teoria degli abiti dianoetici, proposta da Aristotele in Eth. Nic. VI. Come risulta dal Conciliator per quanto concerne la medicina e dal Lucidator per quanto concerne l'astronomia, Pietro segue la classificazione aristotelica e le interpretazioni che di essa erano state date nel medioevo , aggiungendovi come contributo originale l'introduzione di una parte pratica sia nella medicina che nell'astronomia , dove (...) quest'ultima deriva da Tolomeo e dagli Arabi. Peter of Abano's classification of the sciences is an interesting reformulation of the analogous classification proposed by Aristotle in Metaphysics VI, and of Aristotle's theory of the dianoetic habits found in Nichomachean Ethics VI. As apparent in the Conciliator for medicine and in the Lucidator for astronomy, Peter follows the Aristotelian classification and the interpretations of it given in Middle Ages , adding as his own original contribution the introduction of a practical part on medicine and on astronomy , the latter derived from Ptolemy and the Arabs. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that an examination of some passages in Aristotle’s work can contribute to the resolution of crucial problems related to the interpretation of ancient geometrical analysis. In this context, we will focus in particular on the famous passage of the Posterior Analytics in which Aristotle cryptically refers to the analysis practised by the geometers and we will show the fundamental importance of this passage for a correct understanding of ancient geometrical analysis.

After a short summary of the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ conception of being given by E. Gilson, according which the actus essendi is existence, the article sets out the criticisms addressed to this conception by P.T. Geach and A. Kenny, showing that they converge with the criticism developed by the author himself in an article of 1979 on Aristotle. In the author’s view, the best reply to this criticism given by the Thomists is the reply of S.L. Brocks, who has (...) shown that the actus essendi is the perfect way of being which belongs only to God. The author shows that this conception is confirmed by some passages of Thomas’ De ente et essentia. (shrink)

En la filosofía griega se delinean dos concepciones opuestas de la relación entre metafísica y libertad: una según la cual el universo ha tenido origen gracias a un principio inteligente a través de un acto de voluntad, el cual implica la libertad del principio metafísico, es decir, la libertad divina, y otra según la cual el universo procede necesariamente de un principio impersonal, la cual por tanto excluye la libertad divina.

The relevance of Aristotle’s philosophy today is the survival of many Aristotelian concepts, definitions, distinctions, in the culture of many countries. In some cases, e. g. in the fields of logic and of metaphysics, the Aristotelian concepts survive as useful instruments for reasoning, like the concepts of category, contrariety, contradiction, or the distinctions between matter and form and between potency and act. But in other fields, like biology and psychology, some Aristotelian doctrines serve equally as examples of conceptual innovations, as (...) was recognised by the biologist Max Delbrück about the discovery of DNA and by Anthony Kenny about the discussion of the “Mind-Body Problem.” Even in the fields of ethics and of politics, the revival of the practical philosophy of Aristotle has been an occasion for developing new models of social life and organisation of society, as is shown by philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha C. Nussbaum, and by economists like Amartya Sen. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a translation and analysis of Metaphysics α 1, 993 b 23-31 to subsequently show how Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation of said passage led medieval philosophers to attribute a doctrine of creation to Aristotle. For Alexander, those things that are most true and those beings that are in the highest degree, about which Aristotle speaks in Met. α 1, a passage that originally addressed the relationship between the premises and conclusions of demonstrations, are the unmoved movers, (...) which have a relationship of imitation or participation with the things that depend on them. In Averroes, who favors the Neoplatonic notion of perfection, the causality of the unmoved mover becomes an efficient causality in its fullest sense: an explanation not only of the movement of the heavens, but of their being and that of all things. Thus, he implicitly presents Aristotle as a monotheistic and creationist philosopher. Thomas Aquinas, using the notions of “being by essence” and “being by participation” and deriving a notion of “always being” from that of “always being true”, also transforms the unmoved mover into a true creator and explicitly points out the reasons for his interpretation in the text of Aristotle. (shrink)

1. Epistemologia, logica e dialettica -- 2. Fisica, antropologia e metafisica -- 3. Filosofia pratica -- 4, pt. 1. L'influenza di Aristotele: antichità, Medioevo e Rinascimento -- v. 4, pt. 2. L'influenza di Aristotele: età moderna e contemporanea.

I discuss Enrico Berti “Saggezza o filosofia pratica?” published in the current issue of “Ethics & Politics”. I argue that Kant’s normative ethics was in fact a kind of virtue ethics and most of the opposition between Aristotelianism and Kantian ethics in the last three decades has been basically an exercise in cross-purpose.