Aristotle

Can we learn from imagination? This article surveys a thread from an ongoing debate in philosophy of mind and brings it into dialogue with Proclus's notion of mathematical imagination. Imagination for Proclus mediates between intellect and perception and reveals a unique level of reality borne by “intelligible matter.” By contrast, the contemporary debate, focused on concepts such as instructive versus transcendent imagining and propositional versus doxastic justification, is primarily epistemic in nature and seems not to require the fifth-century Platonist's commitment (...) to a distinctive level of imaginal reality. Even so, I argue that Proclus could converse fruitfully with the contemporary debate on questions about whether there is evidence accessible only to imagination and irreducible to other sources and about whether imagination is situationally responsive and able to inform belief. (shrink)

Der Horizont unseres Bewusstseins erstreckt sich auf sämtliche Wahrnehmungenebenso wie auf alles Denken und Handeln. Beide Bereichekommen einander oft in die Quere. Daher bedrängt uns ihr Konfliktbis heute. Er wurde seit den Griechen im Verhältnis zwischen "Sinnlichkeit" und "Verstand" auch immer wieder erörtert. Doch geht die Entscheidung darüber nicht selten mit einer schweren Zerreissprobeeinher. Dabei stellt sie unser Verhalten unweigerlich auf den Prüfstand.Denn sie entspringt der Antinomie zwischen der natürlichenBeschaffenheit des eigenen Körpers und den hohen Ansprüchenunseres Geistes. Diese Beziehung zwischen (...) "Leib" und "Seele" ist niefriktionsfrei und lässt sich weder beherrschen noch verleugnen. IhreVerbindung ist untrennbar. Sie hält bis zum Tod beide Seiten in ihremUnterschied zueinander aufrecht. Die entsprechende Differenz eröffnetuns eine Zeit lang die Welt. Meine Arbeit versucht diese lebensstiftende Diskrepanz in unserer Existenz zur Sprache zu bringen. Dafür holt sie sich von der aristotelischen Untersuchung Über die Seele Hilfeund verspricht sich dadurch einen erheblichen Erkenntnisgewinn. (shrink)

This book provides a fresh interpretation of Aristotle's account of perception, refocusing the debate and emphasising what remains philosophically relevant. It will engage experts on Aristotle and help those who work in ancient philosophy, including advanced students, while inviting contemporary philosophers to engage with Aristotle's thought.

Le Livre des problemes de Aristote est une traduction réalisée vers 1380 par Évrart de Conty, médecin du roi Charles V et maître régent à la Faculté de médecine de Paris. Le texte est basé sur la traduction latine des Problemata physica pseudo-aristotéliciens par Barthélemy de Messine, datant de 1260, et son commentaire, intitulé Expositio Problematum, par le médecin padouan Pietro d'Abano."--Page 4 of cover.

This book discusses Aristotle's methods for the establishment of gynecological facts within his natural science. It argues that many of the gynecological phenomena at stake, such the nature of menstrual blood, the role of female pleasure during sex and women's experiences of erotic dreams, their knowledge of conception and their experiences of (false) pregnancy and childbirth, were-mostly for socio-cultural reasons-not at all or not immediately accessible for a male natural scientific observer such as Aristotle. Given this lack of immediate empirical (...) evidence, Aristotle employed alternative methods for the establishment of facts-such as relying on signs and circumstantial empirical evidence or using analogical and probabilistic reasoning-and relied heavily on existing expert reports, such as mainly early medical sources but also sometimes verbal reports from women themselves"-- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

. In the Laches, virtue is conceived as a whole with parts and the parts are virtues such as courage (190 c-d). In the Protagoras, Socrates asks Protagoras whether the virtues are like parts of gold or like parts in a face (329 d). With regard to the view presented in the Protagoras, scholars debate on whether Plato offers a coherent view that the virtues are like the parts in a face, or whether he thinks that they are like the (...) parts of gold, cf. Devereux 1992, 765-89. For the first view, see Sedley 2014, 65-91; for the second view, see Vlastos 1973, 221-69. For the idea that the virtues are all names for knowledge of good and evil, see Penner 1973, 35-68. This identity thesis has been defended by Taylor 1976, 103; Irwin 1977, 86-90; Ferejohn 1982, 1-21; Ferejohn 1983-4, 377-88; Schofield 1984, 83-95. For a recent perspective on the unity of the virtues in Plato, see Jenks 2022. (shrink)

Experimental science and the philosophy of nature, by R.A. Kocourek.--The problem of motion, by R.A. Kocourek.--The principles of nature, by St. Thomas Aquinas.--The Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas on Books I-II of The physics of Aristotle.--The reason for an introduction to the philosophy of nature.--Outline of the physical works of Aristotle.--Outline of the Commentary on Book I.

The two giants of ancient Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, have traditionally been contrasted as "idealism vs realism." This paper offers a deeper reinterpretation of this contrast. We hypothesize that the directions each philosopher aimed for were, in fact, reversed in the way they were eventually realized through the course of history. Plato, who was oriented towards a transcendentalist structure, surprisingly derived a discipline (i.e. quantum language) that is more useful than modern statistics. Aristotle's empiricism, on the other hand, developed (...) into the causal determinism of Newtonian mechanics. Who would have expected the former to grow into an earthly discipline and the latter into a heavenly one? Who is greater, Plato or Aristotle? (shrink)

Yong Huang presents criticisms of Neo-Aristotelian meta-ethical naturalism and argues Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian approach is superior in defending moral realism. After presenting Huang’s criticisms of the Aristotelian metaethical naturalist picture, such as that of Rosalind Hursthouse, I argue that Huang’s own views succumb to the same criticisms. His metaethics does not avoid an allegedly problematic ‘gap,’ whether ontological or conceptual, between possessing a human nature and exemplifying moral goodness. This ontological gap exists in virtue of the fact that it is (...) possible for there to be bad people, and the conceptual gap exists in virtue of the fact that people are not ‘good’ (in that sense of being a good agent) merely because they are human. Aristotelians and Confucians both should reject that such gaps are problematic. I conclude by proposing that Huang is better understood as criticizing the Aristotelian move from scientific-empirical facts about human nature to the objective prescriptivity of moral norms. But so too I argue that Confucians should not follow Huang here either. There is good scientific evidence that would be supportive of a Confucian analysis of social virtues and provide one way of responding to those worries about the scientific-empirical accessibility of facts about the good life. (shrink)

Brentano’s dissertation "Von der mannigfachen Bedeutung des Seienden nach Aristoteles" (On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle) (1862) is examined in the light of the nineteenth-century debate on the Aristotelian categories. After providing an exposition of the conceptions of the main representatives of this debate, Adolf Trendelenburg and Hermann Bonitz, this paper assesses Brentano’s point of view on the meaning and origin of the Aristotelian categories. It shows (i) that Brentano assumes non-Aristotelian elements in his reading of the Aristotelian (...) categories, (ii) that this depends on the fact that he shares Bonitz’s thesis, and (iii) that his reading is incomplete in the light of certain Aristotelian statements about non-being. (shrink)

Aristotle's Organon in Old and New Logic 1800–1950 explores the reception and interpretation of Aristotle's logic over the last two centuries. The volume covers seminal works during this period by logicians, historians of logic, and historians of philosophy, including John Lloyd Akrill, Francesco Barone, Günther Patzig, Enrico Berti, and Mario Mignucci. Contributors consider the reception of the Organon in old logic and chart the appearance of formal approaches to logic beginning with Boole. This in-depth study of Aristotelianism also covers logic (...) in Kant and Hegel, alongside the problems and projects of interpreting Aristotle in the new logic after Boole and Frege. The background of modern debates concerning induction and abduction provides further insight into Aristotelian logic during the period. By filling gaps in our understanding of Aristotelian logic, this book provides a fundamental missing link in 21st century studies of the history of Aristotelianism. It brings together scholars of both ancient and modern logic to understand the interpretation of ancient logic before and after the development of the modern, algebraic approach to logic. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall discuss the question whether a concrete object can be multi-located while it is moving or not. I shall say nothing on the vexed issue of multi-location in and for itself. Instead, my discussion will support a ‘might’-conditional claim: ‘if multi-location were possible, then change might imply multi-location’. To do this, after a very short clarification of the various meanings of ‘to be located’, I will first present and discuss Diodorus’ arguments against the reality of motion, (...) since they focus on the question of what the location of the moving item is, and then scrutinize Hegel’s reply to Diodorus Cronus’ reasonings, insofar as his answer consists in claiming that an object in motion is in many locations at once. Although many philosophers of the past are referred to, this paper does not aim to be a piece of scholarship, but to explore the various metaphysical possibilities concerning the logic of location underlying change. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo desarrolla una interrogación filosófica sobre lo político a partir de una problematización arqueológica que permite precisar su carácter histórico y discursivo. El emplazamiento de esta pregunta, muestra la constitución y despliegue de lo político en torno a tres arcanos que entrelazan una definición antropológica de la vida (bíos), una modulación técnica (tekné) que prescribe su carácter oikonómico, y un conjunto de relaciones de fuerzas adversariales que definen su procedencia belicosa (stásis). El artículo finaliza con una serie de (...) contrapuntos que permiten poner en perspectiva esta arqueología frente a la crisis y extenuación contemporánea de la política, al haber intensificado su sentido antropológico como voluntad de poder sobre la existencia planetaria. (shrink)

Studies of Aristotle’s syllogistic system, since Corcoran’s deductionist interpretation supplanted Łukasiewicz’ axiomaticist interpretation, misrepresent Aristotle’s logic in two important respects. Following Corcoran, they take indirect deduction to occur only once in a deduction discourse; they then obviate the system having a reductio rule. Second, they represent reduction as a deductive process for deriving ‘imperfect’ syllogisms from ‘perfect’ syllogisms to impose an axiomatic interpretation on the logic. Denying that Aristotle's logic admits of a reductio rule results from this misrepresentation of reduction. (...) This discussion shows that the defects imputed to Aristotle's logic, and systems devised to resolve them, result from misunderstanding reduction, which itself results from misapprehending Prior Analytics expressly to identify in a metadiscourse deduction rules and not deductions per se. (shrink)

This paper discusses an anonymous manuscript Dissertatio against Descartes’s and Gassendi’s theories of knowledge, dating from the first half of the eighteenth century and now preserved in the Biblioteca Forteguerriana in Pistoia. It is probably the result of Jesuit pedagogy, stemming from the lectures in which Aristotle’s works were commented on, drawing heavily on the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas.

In this dissertation, I investigate the resources for Neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy to address social and ethical issues that arise in the use of technologies that rely on digital environments. The theoretical underpinnings of this dissertation represent efforts from contemporary philosophers to re-engineer the theories of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle for the present. I offer my own contribution to this tradition in the context of the ethics and philosophy of technology. I aim to answer the following question: what moral and social (...) issues arise in 21st-century digital environments that Neo-Aristotelian philosophy can address? I propose that Neo-Aristotelian philosophy, inspired by the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, is particularly well-suited to addressing the issues in digital environments that users regularly experience. This dissertation contributes to scholarship within Neo-Aristotelian ethics of technology, MacIntyrean approaches to virtue theory, and the ethics of technology more broadly. (shrink)

De mundo is a protreptic to philosophy in the form of a letter to Alexander the Great and is traditionally ascribed to Aristotle. It offers a unique view of the cosmos, God and their relationship, which was inspired by Aristotle but written by a later author. The author provides an outline of cosmology, geography and meteorology, only to argue that a full understanding of the cosmos cannot be achieved without a proper grasp of God as its ultimate cause. To ensure (...) such a grasp, the author provides a series of twelve carefully chosen interlocking analogies, building a complex picture in the reader's mind. The work develops a distinctly Aristotelian picture of God and the cosmos while paying tribute to pre-Aristotelian philosophers and avoiding open criticism of rival schools of philosophy. De mundo exercised considerable influence in late antiquity and then in the Renaissance and Early Modern times. (shrink)

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the origin and development of the concept of physical continuity in ancient thought before Aristotle, combining a thorough study of Presocratic philosophy with Aristotle's perspective. The concept of continuity plays a fundamental role in Aristotle's philosophy, particularly in his physics; however, nowhere in his corpus does he present his theory of continuity. In this book, readers gain a solid foundation for understanding Aristotle's theory of the continuum through an in-depth exploration of Presocratic (...) views on being and continuity. The book's innovative approach critically analyzes Aristotle's engagement with his predecessors, including the work of Anaximander, the Pythagoreans, Eleatic philosophy, and the Atomists. By addressing this gap in existing literature, this volume not only enriches the discourse on Presocratic thought, but also establishes a clearer understanding of Aristotle's contributions to the concept of continuity. This book is suitable for students and scholars of ancient philosophy and the philosophy of science, particularly those working on Presocratic philosophy and Aristotle's thought more broadly. (shrink)

This volume of fourteen essays explores the biology of Aristotle and the Early Peripatos (Theophrastus and the Physical Problems) in its various dimensions-how the study of the soul contributes to the foundation of the science of perishable life, what is the program of this science and its main explanatory strategies, whether it be the explanation of natural generation or the relationship of the animal to its surroundings. But the authors also explore what might be, to Aristotle, the unity of life, (...) not only that of animals and plants, but also that of celestial bodies and the Prime Mover. (shrink)

Alexander of Aphrodisias reports a series of arguments from Aristotle’s Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ purportedly deployed by Plato to defend his doctrine of principles. One of these arguments, the so-called “categorial reduction argument”, underpins the postulation of the two first principles, the One and the Great and Small, through a bipartition of all beings into two categories, labeled ‘in themselves’ and ‘opposites’. I scrutinize this argument and compare it with other Early Academic bicategorial divisions and especially with the tripartite categorial distinction, itself (...) apparently based on material of Early Academic provenance, included in Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus Physicos 2.262-275. I argue that the Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ account of the “categorial reduction argument” leaves open certain philosophical problems, and Sextus’ report is best interpreted, rather than as a more detailed version of that account (as a common view would have it), as an alternative formulation of it that incorporates a philosophical attempt to disentangle those problems. (shrink)

This meticulously researched and philosophically sophisticated book provides a comprehensive reassessment of sexual difference in Aristotle, covering metaphysic.

George Boole published the pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic in 1847. He believed that logic should belong to a universal mathematics that would cover both quantitative and nonquantitative research. With his pamphlet, Boole signalled an important change in symbolic logic: in contrast with his predecessors, his thinking was exclusively extensional. Notwithstanding the innovations introduced he accepted all traditional Aristotelean syllogisms. Nevertheless, some criticisms have been raised concerning Boole’s view of Aristotelean logic as the solution of algebraic equations. In order (...) to circumvent such criticisms, we show here how Boole’s conclusions may be deduced from the axioms and inference rules proposed in his pamphlet, from which Aristotle’s deductions in Prior Analytics (including those that are completed through an impossibility) can be stated as theorems. We clarify his method for dealing with both universal and particular premises by means of his symbol v and demystify some criticisms concerning the way he expressed particular premises. Boole’s conclusions for some of those premises for which according to Aristotle there is no deduction are also discussed. The deductive system presented here has the potential to provide a new perspective on Boole’s approach to logic in The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. (shrink)