The Chain of Change is the first full-scale philosophical commentary devoted to Aristotle's Physics VII, in which Aristotle argues for the existence of a first, unmoved cosmic mover. This study systematically considers the major issues of the book, and argues for the fundamental importance of Physics VII in our understanding of Aristotelian cosmology and natural science. Physics VII is extant in two versions, and therefore poses special editorial problems. For this reason one of the features of Dr. Wardy's study (...) is the provision of an improved text and translation in both versions. The author's comprehensive comparison of their merits, philosophical and philological, has a significant bearing on our understanding of the nature and evolution of the Aristotelian corpus. The second part of the book is devoted to critical examination of the argument, including one of the most elaborate and challenging in the entire Aristotelian corpus. Throughout, the author concentrates on those points where Aristotle diverges most sharply and provocatively from contemporary presumptions in philosophy and natural science. (shrink)

This book considers the relation between language and thought. Robert Wardy explores this huge topic by analyzing linguistic relativism with reference to a Chinese translation of Aristotle's Categories. He addresses some key questions, such as, do the basic structures of language shape the major thought patterns of its native speakers? Could philosophy be guided and constrained by the language in which it is done? And does Aristotle survive rendition into Chinese intact? Wardy's answers will fascinate philosophers, Sinologists, (...) classicists, linguists and anthropologists, and make a major contribution to the scholarly literature. (shrink)

Comment le Banquet (ne) tient-il (pas) ensemble? La réponse de loin la plus populaire est que le Banquet a une structure téléologique, culminant dans le discours de Socrate/Diotime, qui incorpore ou écarte de diverses manières les affirmations dignes d’attention faites dans les discours précédents à propos d’ erōs. Tout ce qui survit d’une source non-philosophique le fait non pas dans sa forme originale, mais plutôt en vertu de l’alchimie platonicienne qu’il a subie, en tant que celle-ci traduit, retravaille et raffine (...) les opinions ordinaires en une puissante théorie philosophique. Le présent article propose une alternative radicale. Il soutient que nous devrions systématiquement renverser les jugements réducteurs d’Éryximaque concernant Héraclite sur l’harmonisation et appliquer les résultats au Banquet lui-même. Il y a une harmonie discordante incorporée dans un logos complexe et polyphonique. Un tel logos prospère grâce à la dissension, puisque son existence même comme tout unifié dépend de l’opposition maintenue sans affaiblissement entre des éléments qui acceptent de différer. Le Banquet consiste en de multiples voix unifiées, mais sans entraves. L’article conclut que, afin d’éviter une pétition de principe fondamentale, le Banquet promeut une sorte de contextualisme épistémologique qui est anathème dans d’autres contextes platoniciens. Et que ce n’est pas un dialogue. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Socrates and Dialectical Method Plato Aristotle Hellenistic Methodology.

Doing Greek Philosophy conveys a vivid sense of dynamism and continuity of the Greek philosophical tradition and illustrates how interaction between Greek philosophers creates and sustains that tradition. It concentrates on a set of inter-related challenges and problems that emerged early in the tradition and moves on to the subsequent reactions to them.

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is often characterised in terms of competitive individuals debating orally with one another in public arenas. But it also developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge some other particular philosopher or group of philosophers as an authority and offer to that authority explicit intellectual allegiance. This is most obvious in the development after the classical period of the philosophical 'schools' with agreed founders and, most importantly, canonical founding texts. There also (...) developed a tradition of commentary, interpretation, and discussion of texts which itself became a mode of philosophical debate. As time went on, the weight of a growing tradition of reading and appealing to a certain corpus of foundational texts began to shape how later antiquity viewed its philosophical past and also how philosophical debate and inquiry was conducted. In this book leading scholars explore aspects of these important developments. (shrink)

A review and comparison of two recent and very different monographs about Aristotle's Categories: W. R. Mann "The Discovery of Things" and Robert Ward's "Aristotle in China".

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Robert B. Brandom is one of the most original philosophers of our day, whose book Making It Explicit covered and extended a vast range of topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language--the very core of analytic philosophy. This new work provides an approachable introduction to the complex system that Making It Explicit mapped out. A tour of the earlier book's large ideas and relevant details, Articulating Reasons offers an easy entry into two of the main themes of Brandom's (...) work: the idea that the semantic content of a sentence is determined by the norms governing inferences to and from it, and the idea that the distinctive function of logical vocabulary is to let us make our tacit inferential commitments explicit. Brandom's work, making the move from representationalism to inferentialism, constitutes a near-Copernican shift in the philosophy of language--and the most important single development in the field in recent decades. Articulating Reasons puts this accomplishment within reach of nonphilosophers who want to understand the state of the foundations of semantics. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. Semantic Inferentialism and Logical Expressivism 2. Action, Norms, and Practical Reasoning 3. Insights and Blindspots of Reliabilism 4. What Are Singular Terms, and Why Are There Any? 5. A Social Route from Reasoning to Representing 6. Objectivity and the Normative Fine Structure of Rationality Notes Index Displaying a sovereign command of the intricate discussion in the analytic philosophy of language, Brandom manages successfully to carry out a program within the philosophy of language that has already been sketched by others, without losing sight of the vision inspiring the enterprise in the important details of his investigation ' Using the tools of a complex theory of language, Brandom succeeds in describing convincingly the practices in which the reason and autonomy of subjects capable of speech and action are expressed. --J'rgen Habermas. (shrink)