When Aristotle argues at the Metaphysics Z.17, 1041b11–33 that a whole, which is not a heap, contains ‘something else’, i.e. the form, besides the elements, it is not clear whether or not the form is a proper part of the whole. I defend the claim that the form is not a proper part within the context of the relevant passage, since the whole is divided into elements, not into elements and the form. Different divisions determine different senses of ‘part’, and (...) thus the form is not a part in the same sense as the elements are parts. I object to Koslicki’s (2006) interpretation, according to which the form is a proper part along the elements in a single sense of ‘part’, although she insists that the form and the elements belong to different categories. I argue that Koslicki’s reading involves a category mistake, i.e. the conjunction of items that do not belong to the same category (Goldwater 2018). Since for Aristotle parthood presupposes some kind of similarity of parts, the conjunction of form and elements requires treating these items as somehow belonging to the same category, e.g. ‘being’, but no such category exists. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aristotle’s Metaphysics Z.3 deploys a reductio against the claim that ‘substances underlie by being the subjects of predication’, in order to demonstrate the need for a new explanation of how substances underlie. Z.13 and H.1 corroborate this reading: both allude to an argument originally contained in Z.3, but now lost from our text, that form, matter and compound ‘underlie’ in different ways. This helps explain some of Z’s peculiarities—and it avoids committing Aristotle to self-contradiction about whether (...) matter is substance, a claim denied in the reductio but endorsed elsewhere. (shrink)

The expression tode ti, commonly translated as ‘a this’, plays a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Drawing lightly on theories of demonstratives in contemporary linguistics, I discuss the expres...

I use Plotinus to present absolute divine simplicity as the consequence of principles about metaphysical and explanatory priority to which most theists are already committed. I employ Phil Corkum’s account of ontological independence as independent status to present a new interpretation of Plotinus on the dependence of everything on the One. On this reading, if something else (whether an internal part or something external) makes you what you are, then you are ontologically dependent on it. I show that this account (...) supports Plotinus’s claim that any entity with parts cannot be fully independent. In particular, I lay out Plotinus’s case for thinking that even a divine self-understanding intellect cannot be fully independent. I then argue that a weaker version of simplicity is not enough for the theist since priority monism meets the conditions of a moderate version of ontological independence just as well as a transcendent but complex ultimate being. (shrink)

This is a survey of Aristotle's development of the concept of substance in the Categories and Book VII (Zeta) of the Metaphysics. We begin with the Categories conception of a primary substance as that which is not "in a subject" -- i.e., not ontologically dependent on anything else -- and also not "said of a subject" -- i.e., not predicated of any item beneath it in its categorial tree. This gives us the idea of primary substances as ontologically basic individuals, (...) the fundamental subjects of predication and of change. We then examine the conception of substance in Metaphysics Zeta, where Aristotle is interested not just in the question of what the primary substances are, but in the question of what makes them substances, or, as he would put it, what the "substance OF something" is. The conception of substance that Aristotle ends up with seems (as has been frequently noted) to be threatened with inconsistency, in that Aristotle seems to want to maintain, simultaneously, that (i) substance is form, (ii) form is universal, and (iii) no universal is a substance. Two main approaches toward resolving this inconsistency are considered, and a sketch is provided of how one of these approaches might be fleshed out. On the line I propose, the substantial form of a material compound is predicated accidentally and universally of the matter of that compound, but it is not the substance of the matter of which it is predicated. Rather, it is the substance of itself; but since it is the cause of the compound's being essentially the kind of thing that it is, the substantial form is, in a derivative way, the substance of the compound as well. (shrink)

Through a detailed analysis of the various modes of argumentation employed by Aristotle throughout his natural scientific works, I aim to contribute to the growing scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s theory of science and his actual scientific practice. I challenge the standard reading of Aristotle as a methodological empiricist and show that he permits a variety of non-empirical arguments to support controversial theses in properly scientific contexts. Specifically, I examine his use of logical (logikôs) argumentation in the discussion of (...) mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8, rational (kata ton logon) argumentation in his discussion of cardiocentrism throughout the biological works, and the method of division in Posterior Analytics II 13. (shrink)

The particular subject of this article is the very first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics book Lambda: what does it really mean? I would stick to the most generous sense: (Aristotelian) theoria is about substance. Indeed, it has been often held that Lambda ignores the so-called focal meaning, and shows a remarkably rough stage of Aristotle’s conception of prime philosophy. By contrast, in this light, the very incipit of Lambda appears to testify Aristotle’s concern in an ontological foundation of theoretical wisdom (...) as such, which Lambda shares with the Metaphysics “central books”, Zeta in particular, in a not less coherent and possibly more advanced form. (shrink)