Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics

Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics PDF Author: Theodore Scaltsas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199244416
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This volume presents fourteen new essays by leading figures in the fields of ancient philosophy and contemporary metaphysics, discussing Aristotle's theory of the unity of substances. This topic remains at the centre of metaphysical enquiry.The contributors examine the nature of essences, how they differ from other components of substance, and how they are related to these other components. The central questions discussed here are: What does Aristotle mean by 'potentiality' and 'actuality'? How do these concepts explicate matter andform, and how are they related to the actuality of substance? What is the role of matter and form in accounting for the unity, identity, and individuation of substances? These questions are crucial to an understanding of the unity of composite substances and their identity over time.The aim of the volume is both exegetical and philosophical: to address central issues in Aristotle's Metaphysics, and to stimulate further investigation of the problems and controversies that arise from these.

Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics

Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics PDF Author: Theodore Scaltsas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199244416
Category : Metaphysics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume presents fourteen new essays by leading figures in the fields of ancient philosophy and contemporary metaphysics, discussing Aristotle's theory of the unity of substances. This topic remains at the centre of metaphysical enquiry.The contributors examine the nature of essences, how they differ from other components of substance, and how they are related to these other components. The central questions discussed here are: What does Aristotle mean by 'potentiality' and 'actuality'? How do these concepts explicate matter andform, and how are they related to the actuality of substance? What is the role of matter and form in accounting for the unity, identity, and individuation of substances? These questions are crucial to an understanding of the unity of composite substances and their identity over time.The aim of the volume is both exegetical and philosophical: to address central issues in Aristotle's Metaphysics, and to stimulate further investigation of the problems and controversies that arise from these.

Complicated Presence

Complicated Presence PDF Author: Jussi Backman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438456506
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
From its Presocratic beginnings, Western philosophy concerned itself with a quest for unity both in terms of the systematization of knowledge and as a metaphysical search for a unity of being—two trends that can be regarded as converging and culminating in Hegel's system of absolute idealism. Since Hegel, however, the philosophical quest for unity has become increasingly problematic. Jussi Backman returns to that question in this book, examining the place of the unity of being in the work of Heidegger. Backman sketches a consistent picture of Heidegger as a thinker of unity who throughout his career in different ways attempted to come to terms with both Parmenides's and Aristotle's fundamental questions concerning the singularity or multiplicity of being—attempting to do so, however, in a "postmetaphysical" manner rooted in rather than above and beyond particular, situated beings. Through his analysis, Backman offers a new way of understanding the basic continuity of Heidegger's philosophical project and the interconnectedness of such key Heideggerian concepts as ecstatic temporality, the ontological difference, the turn (Kehre), the event (Ereignis), the fourfold (Geviert), and the analysis of modern technology.

Priority in Aristotle's Metaphysics

Priority in Aristotle's Metaphysics PDF Author: Michail Peramatzis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019958835X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The idea that some parts of reality are fundamental and others derivative was an important one in Aristotle's philosophical system, and is now again of great current interest in philosophy. Michail Peramatzis presents a new account of priority relations in Aristotle's metaphysics, and draws out their continuing philosophical significance.

The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle

The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle PDF Author: Giovanni Reale
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873953856
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Reale's monumental work establishes the exact dimensions of Aristotle's concept of first philosophy and proves the profound unity of concept that exists in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Reale's opposition to the genetic interpretation of the Metaphysics is an updated return to a more traditional view of Aristotle's work, one which runs counter to nearly all contemporary scholarship. Reale argues that Aristotle's first philosophy includes a study of being, a study of substance, a study of divine substance, and a study of principles and causes, all of which are integrated and dialectically reconciled.

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle

The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle PDF Author: Christopher Shields
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199938431
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 731

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle reflects the lively international character of Aristotelian studies, drawing contributors from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and Japan; it also, appropriately, includes a preponderance of authors from the University of Oxford, which has been a center of Aristotelian studies for many centuries. The volume equally reflects the broad range of activity Aristotelian studies comprise today: such activity ranges from the primarily textual and philological to the application of broadly Aristotelian themes to contemporary problems irrespective of their narrow textual fidelity. In between these extremes one finds the core of Aristotelian scholarship as it is practiced today, and as it is primarily represented in this Handbook: textual exegesis and criticism. Even within this more limited core activity, one witnesses a rich range of pursuits, with some scholars seeking primarily to understand Aristotle in his own philosophical milieu and others seeking rather to place him into direct conversation with contemporary philosophers and their present-day concerns. No one of these enterprises exhausts the field. On the contrary, one of the most welcome and enlivening features of the contemporary Aristotelian scene is precisely the cross-fertilization these mutually beneficial and complementary activities offer one another. The volume, prefaced with an introduction to Aristotle's life and works by the editor, covers the main areas of Aristotelian philosophy and intellectual enquiry: ethics, metaphysics, politics, logic, language, psychology, rhetoric, poetics, theology, physical and biological investigation, and philosophical method. It also, and distinctively, looks both backwards and forwards: two chapters recount Aristotle's treatment of earlier philosophers, who proved formative to his own orientations and methods, and another three chapters chart the long afterlife of Aristotle's philosophy, in Late Antiquity, in the Islamic World, and in the Latin West.

Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle's Science of Nature

Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle's Science of Nature PDF Author: Mariska Leunissen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139490419
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In Aristotle's teleological view of the world, natural things come to be and are present for the sake of some function or end (for example, wings are present in birds for the sake of flying). Whereas much of recent scholarship has focused on uncovering the (meta-)physical underpinnings of Aristotle's teleology and its contrasts with his notions of chance and necessity, this book examines Aristotle's use of the theory of natural teleology in producing explanations of natural phenomena. Close analyses of Aristotle's natural treatises and his Posterior Analytics show what methods are used for the discovery of functions or ends that figure in teleological explanations, how these explanations are structured, and how well they work in making sense of phenomena. The book will be valuable for all who are interested in Aristotle's natural science, his philosophy of science, and his biology.

Aristotle's Concept of Mind

Aristotle's Concept of Mind PDF Author: Erick Raphael Jiménez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108329446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
In this book, Erick Raphael Jiménez examines Aristotle's concept of mind (nous), a key concept in Aristotelian psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology. Drawing on a close analysis of De Anima, Jiménez argues that mind is neither disembodied nor innate, as has commonly been held, but an embodied ability that emerges from learning and discovery. Looking to Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology, Jiménez argues that just as Aristotelian mind is not innate, intelligibility is not an innate feature of the objects of Aristotelian mind, but an outcome of certain mental constructions that make those objects intelligible. Conversely, it is through these same mental constructions that thinkers become intelligent, or come to possess minds. Connecting this account to Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology, Jiménez shows how this concept of mind fits within Aristotle's wider philosophy. His bold interpretation will interest a wide range of readers in ancient and later philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity PDF Author: Antonia Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198790856
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This is a study of the union of matter and the soul in the human being in the thought of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. At first glance this issue might appear arcane, but it was at the centre of polemic with heresy in the thirteenth century and at the centre of the development of medieval thought more broadly. The book argues that theological issues, especially the need for an identical body to be resurrected at the end of time, but also considerations about Christ's crucifixion and saints' relics, were central to Aquinas's account of how human beings are constituted. The book explores in particular how theological questions and concerns shaped Aquinas's thought on individuality and personal and bodily identity over time, his embryology and understanding of heredity, his work on nutrition and bodily growth, and his fundamental conception of matter itself. It demonstrates, up-close, how Aquinas used his peripatetic sources, Aristotle and (especially) Averroes, to frame and further his own thinking in these areas. The book also indicates how Aquinas's thought on bodily identity became pivotal to university debates and relations between the rival mendicant orders in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and that quarrels surrounding these issues persisted into the fifteenth century. Not only is this a study of the interface between theology, biology, and physics in Aquinas's mind; it also fundamentally revises the view of Aquinas that is generally accepted. Aquinas is famous for holding that the one and only substantial (or nature-determining) form in a human being is the soul, and most scholars have therefore thought that he located the identity of the individual in their soul. This book restores the body through a thorough and critical examination of the range of Aquinas's works.

Aristotle’s Ever-turning World in Physics 8: Analysis and Commentary

Aristotle’s Ever-turning World in Physics 8: Analysis and Commentary PDF Author: Dougal Blyth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004302387
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In Aristotle’s Ever-turning World in Physics 8 Dougal Blyth analyses, passage by passage, Aristotle’s reasoning in his explanation of cosmic movement, and provides a detailed evaluation of ancient and modern commentary on this centrally influential text in the history of ancient and medieval philosophy and science. In Physics 8 Aristotle argues for the everlastingness of the world, and explains this as deriving from a single first moved body, the sphere of the stars whose rotation around the earth is caused by an immaterial prime mover. Blyth’s explanation of Aristotle’s individual arguments, techniques of reasoning and overall strategy in Physics 8 aims to bring understanding of his method, doctrines and achievements in natural philosophy to a new level of clarity.

Time, Technology and Environment

Time, Technology and Environment PDF Author: Altamirano Marco Altamirano
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748691596
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Marco Altamirano critiques the modern concept of nature to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. He reveals the modern origins of the epistemological configuration of nature, where a subject confronts an object in space (and at time t), and wonders about her mode of access to that object. After critiquing the spatial orientation of this concept of nature, Altamirano shows that a new concept of time is necessary to reinstall the subject within its concrete ecology. Altamirano goes on to deploy conceptual resources excavated from Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault and Leroi-Gourhan to show how technology, which bypasses the nature-artifice distinction, is an essential dimension of the philosophy of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that escapes the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature for so long.