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Eleven scholars present a comprehensive study of the first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. This is a key text for the reconstruction of the early history of Greek philosophy, and sets the agenda for Aristotle's project of wisdom. Included is a new edition of the Greek text, and an introduction which examines its divergent traditions.
The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. This omission is all the more surprising because the Metaphysics is one of our principal sources for thinking that the problem is central and for the views of other ancient philosophers on it.The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognized as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. Halper uses the problem of the one and the many as a lens through which to examine the Central Books. What he sees is an extraordinary degree of doctrinal cogency and argumentative coherence in a work that almost everyone else supposes to be some sort of patchwork. Rather than trying to elucidate Aristotle's doctrines-most of which have little explicitly to do with the problem, Halper holds that the problem of the one and the many, in various formulations, is the key problematic from which Aristotle begins and with which he constructs his arguments. Thus, exploring the problem of the one and the many turns out to be a way to reconstruct Aristotle's arguments in the Metaphysics. Armed with the arguments, Halper is able to see Aristotle's characteristic doctrines as conclusions. These latter are, for the most part, supported by showing that they resolve otherwise insoluble problems. Moreover, having Aristotle's arguments enables Halper to delimit those doctrines and to resolve the apparent contradiction in Aristotle's account of primary ousia, the classic problem of the Central Books. Although there is no way to make the Metaphysics easy, this very thorough treatment of the text succeeds in making it surprisingly intelligible.
The Metaphysics presents Aristotle's mature rejection of both the Platonic theory that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of reality and the hardheaded view that all processes are ultimately material. He argued instead that the reality or substance of things lies in their concrete forms, and in so doing he probed some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? And are there certain things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? The seminal notions discussed in The Metaphysics - of 'substance' and associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, potentiality and actuality - have had a profound and enduring influence, and laid the foundations for one of the central branches of Western philosophy.
A distinguished group of scholars of ancient philosophy here presents a systematic study of the twelfth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Lambda, which can be regarded as a self-standing treatise on substance, has been attracting particular attention in recent years, and was chosen as the focusof the fourteenth Symposium Aristotelicum, from which this volume derives. At the Symposium, each of Lambda's ten chapters was taken in turn as the subject of a session at which a specially written paper was read to and discussed by the assembled symposiasts. (The ninth chapter commanded twosessions by dint of its particular difficulty.) The papers have been revised in the light of discussion, and are now offered to a wider audience as a discursive commentary on points of particular philosophical interest covering all of Lambda. Michael Frede's extensive Introduction aims to give abroader view of Lambda as a whole and the problems it raises, and thus to provide the context for the discussion of each of the chapters. This volume will be a resource of great value and interest for anyone working on ancient metaphysics and theology.
The volumes of the Symposium Aristotelicum have become essential reference works for the study of Aristotle. In this nineteenth volume, eleven distinguished scholars of ancient philosophy provide a running commentary on the first book of Aristotle's Physics, a central treatise of the Aristotelian corpus that aims at knowledge of the principles of physical change. Along with the general introduction, the ten chapters together comment on the entirety of the Aristotelian text and discuss the philosophical issues that are raised in it in detail. Aristotle is shown to be in dialogue with the divergent doctrines of earlier philosophers, namely with the Eleatics' monism, with Anaxagoras' theory of mixture, and finally with the Platonist dyadism that posits the two principles of Form and the Great and Small. Aristotle uses critical examination of his predecessors' views as the basis for formulating his own theory of the principles of natural things, which are fundamental for the entire Aristotelian study of the natural world. He provides his own solution to the problem of coming-to-be and passing-away by distinguishing between coming in actuality and in potentiality. Comprehensive analysis of Aristotle's doctrines and arguments, as well as critical discussion of rival interpretations, will make this volume a valuable resource for scholars of Aristotle.
Laura Castelli presents a new translation of the tenth book (Iota) of Aristotle's Metaphysics, together with a comprehensive commentary. Castelli's commentary helps readers to understand Aristotle's most systematic account of what it is for something to be one, what it is for something to be a unit of measurement, and what contraries are.
Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition argues that Aristotle’s treatises must be approached as progressive unfoldings of a unified position that may extend over a single book, an entire treatise, or across several works. Contributors demonstrate that Aristotle relies on both explanatory and expository principles. Explanatory principles include familiar doctrines such as the four causes, actuality’s priority over potentiality and nature’s doing nothing in vain. Expository principles are at least as important. They pertain to proper sequence, pedagogical method, the role of reputable views and the opinions of predecessors, the equivocity of key explanatory terms, and the need to scrupulously observe distinctions between the different sciences. A sensitivity to expository principles is crucial to understanding both particular arguments and entire treatises.
Author : Alexander of Aphrodisias Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 462 pages File Size : 32,23 MB Release : 2021-12-06 Category : Philosophy ISBN : 3110731320
This is the first of a two-volume edition of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The new edition, which includes a philosophical and philological introduction, as well as notes to textcritical issues, is based on a critical evaluation of the entire manuscript tradition of the commentary. It also takes into account its indirect tradition and the Latin translation of Juan Ginès Sepúlveda.
Focusing primarily on Aristotle’s Physics Alpha, an attempt is made to establish the structure and significance of the Aristotelian analogy. Traditionally, the concept of analogy in Aristotle has been treated along two lines of interpretation. In this book, these are referred to as the mathematical interpretation and the correlative interpretation. The mathematical approach claims that the Aristotelian analogy only accounts for proportional comparisons between usually four things. On the other hand, the correlative interpretation describes the Aristotelian analogy as something that unites the multiple uses of a single term (the many uses of “healthy,” for example). This book will argue that both of these interpretations overlook the nature of the Aristotelian analogy. The structure of analogy can be taken from Aristotle’s discussion of the three principles of natural “becoming” in his Physics Alpha. In Physics Alpha, Aristotle claims that these three principles are: 1) the being in its addressable form (logos); 2) the course of becoming of that addressable being (sterēsis); 3) the substance that remains the same throughout the change (hypokeimenon). Although the first principle, logos, accounts for addressability, the other two do not. The second and third principles are inseparable from logos but always remain hidden from addressability (ana-logos). This book will argue that these principles reveal a structure of analogy that discloses an inherent mobility of logos which enables it to reflect the intuitive and ever-changing principles of becoming. As such, the relationship between Logos and intuition (nous) can be reimagined.
"This addition to the Clarendon Aristotle series comprises a new translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Book [Theta], an introduction to the basic notions and problems around which the book is structured, and a detailed chapter-by-chapter critical commentary. Makin's aim throughout is to present Aristotle's text in as accessible a manner as possible, and to encourage and enable readers to engage critically with Aristotle's arguments. Metaphysics Book [Theta] is an extended discussion of the distinction between the actual and the potential, a distinction which is important both for Aristotle's own thought and for later philosophers. Aristotle starts by considering the relation between capacities and changes, and then expands his discussion to cover the notions of matter and substance, which are at the heart of his ontology. Among the topics covered in detail in the commentary are the distinctions between two-way and one-way capacities, and between rational and non-rational capacities; arguments against reductive views of possibility and impossibility; Aristotle's treatment of capacity identity and his account of the exercise of capacities; Aristotle's answer to the question 'what is it to be potentially such and such?'; his defence of the idea that actuality is prior in various ways to potentiality; and his brief comments on the evaluation of potentialities and actualities, the role of the actual-potential distinction in geometrical knowledge, and his treatment of truth and falsity." --Book Jacket.