Although there are a very few occasions on which Aristotle speaks of words, on the one hand, or mental concepts, on the other, as universals, he was no nominalist and no conceptualist. This negative thesis I have argued sufficiently, at least to my own satisfaction, in an earlier paper. He was, rather, a realist, but of a very tenuous sort. As I said in the earlier paper, he viewed universals as real entities but lacking numerical oneness; each is numerically many, (...) and yet each is also one in some sense. The specific identity of numerically distinct particulars creates something like a class, and this is the universal.This interpretation was not, in the earlier paper, defended against those who would attribute to Aristotle a much more robust form of realism, and it is that defense which this paper will undertake to provide. The evidence which can be marshalled for the more robust realism is impressive – more so, I would say, than that which can be brought forth for either the nominalist or the conceptualist interpretations. It rests on numerous passages which either explicitly or implicitly seem to tie together as identical, forms, substances, universals, and intelligible objects. (shrink)

Whether or not we adopt some form of physicalism in our thinking about the psychology of humans and other organisms we all believe that a mind is something that comes into being, changes, develops and decays. The correlation of the development and then later the decay of our mental powers with changes in the brain post-dates our belief that the mental realm is as much an area where things ebb and flow, come to be and pass away, as is the (...) physical. Even ancient authors who hold to the indestructibility of the soul allow that it changes in a host of ways. It is very odd, then, to discover that Aristotle appears to deny all this and feels impelled to treat the soul as unchanging and motionless. I propose to explore here exactly what Aristotle meant by saying the soul does not move and why he said it. In the end our investigation leads to some difficulties for Aristotle's psychological ontology which I am not able to resolve. (shrink)

Two ideas govern the organisation of this collection. It is suggested that medieval philosophy is best studied as an interactive debate between thinkers of different times, and also the importance of the Ancient Greek philosophers in this field.

This book presents selections from the political and social thought of the ancient West from the early sixth century BCE up to the early years of the Roman Empire and includes not only the classic philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, but a number of dramatists and historians as well. The range of topics these writings treat run from class conflict, through the perils of democracy and the horrors of tyranny, to the place of women in politics, while the styles range (...) from the deeply dramatic of Sophocles' Antigone and the bawdy satire of Aristophanes' Assemblywomen to Plato's Socratic dialogue Republic and Aristotle's scientific treatise Politics. The translations have been chosen, and sometimes modified, for clarity and readability, and are accompanied by introductions which set forth the historical context and trace the general lines of thought the readings develop. Frequent notes explain references to ancient lore unfamiliar to many readers. Questions for discussion accompany each reading. (shrink)

Once Alexander of Aphrodisias revived the Peripatetic philosophy in the late secondcentury CE, Aristotle's surviving corpus became the guiding texts for a philosophicalschool, and, like any school, the Aristotelian one tried to systematize and dogmatizeits founder's teachings into a coherent and comprehensive approach to everything. Thisway of reading Aristotle was the dominant one through the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages, although occasionally a dissenter might express some doubt about how certain Aristotle was on various points, particularly in cosmology and natural (...) science. Nordid Aristotle's detractors in the modern period cease to regard his philosophy as totallydogmatic—though fundamentally mistaken, of course. It was not until German scholarship in the nineteenth century thought it could discern temporal development in Aristotle's approach to a wide variety of questions that the scholastic view ceased to be theestablished wisdom. But now this historical approach has been largely jettisoned, leaving us with an Aristotelian corpus in which we can recognize many doctrinal tensions and doubts that were very likely endemic to Aristotle's thought right to the end of his life. (shrink)

In Making Wonderful, Martin M. Tweedale tells how an ideology arose in the West that energized the economic expansion that has led to ecological disaster. He takes us back to the rise of cities and autocratic rulers, and analyzes how respect for custom and tradition gave way to the dominance of top-down rational planning and organization. Then came a highly attractive myth of an eventual future in which all of humankind's material and spiritual ills would be banished and life "made (...) wonderful." Originating in Zoroastrianism and, through Jewish apocalyptic works, flowing into early Christianity, this belief produced utopian ideologies that set the West apart from the other civilizations of the old world. Tweedale shows how this thinking became popular among Western elites in the early modern period and eventually resulted in the distinctively Western doctrine of progress, an idea that once coupled with a virtually religious faith in the capacity of science and technology to improve human life, released economic expansion from traditional constraints. Exploring sources from philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas, Making Wonderful is for all readers who are intellectually curious about the roots of our eco-catastrophe. (shrink)

This collection of papers derives from a conference on the reception of Aristotle in the Middle Ages held at the University of Alberta in September, 1990, and organized by the editors. They conceived of the conference in the light of a general view of Aristotle and medieval thought, a statement of which may serve as an introduction to the papers which follow.Within the Greek philosophical tradition Aristotle's works became the focus of commentary and discussion; they became, furthermore, the texts of (...) instruction, particularly in logic. Some scholars, of a Neo-Platonist orientation, sought to harmonize the teachings of Plato and Aristotle and to deliver those teachings as a single science or body of knowledge. (shrink)