Aristotle

This new translation of _On Coming to Be and Passing Away _and_ Meteorology 1 and 4_ fits seamlessly with the other volumes in the New Hackett Aristotle Series, enabling Anglophone readers to study these works in a way previously not possible. The Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what it is about, what it is trying to do, how it goes about doing it, and what sort of audience it presupposes. Sequentially numbered, cross-referenced endnotes provide the information most (...) needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index indicates the places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. (shrink)

"Even those already familiar with Aristotle may be surprised to learn that discussions of theological topics can be found in so many of his works. Reeve's idea of packaging these texts sequentially along with commentary and notes is brilliant. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Aristotle's theology."_— S. Marc Cohen_,__Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, University of Washington.

Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_ deals with character and its proper development in the acquisition of thoughtful habits directed toward appropriate ends. The articles in this unique collection, many new or not readily available, form a continuos commentary on the _Ethics_. Philosophers and classicists alike will welcome them.

In this paper, I provide an interpretation of Plato’s repeated claims in Republic V that women are “weaker” (asthenestera) than men. Specifically, I argue that Plato thinks women have a psychological propensity to get easily dispirited, which makes them less effective in implementing and executing their rational decisions. This interpretation achieves several things. It qualifies Plato’s position regarding women and their position in the polis. It provides the background against which we can interpret Aristotle’s claim in Politics I that women (...) possess a deliberative capacity that is not authoritative (akuron). It expands our understanding of the nature and role of spirit (thumos) in these authors. And, finally, it gives us insight into a kind of moral-psychological success that Plato and Aristotle consider central to both personal and political agency. (shrink)

Although Aristotle’s Metaphysics received much attention in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, scholars and historians of science were not particularly interested in clarifying the aim of Aristotle’s appeal to astronomy in Λ 8. Read with monotheistic prejudices, this chapter was quickly abandoned by Aristotelian scholars as a gratuitous insertion, which downgrades Aristotle’s God for the sake of some supplementary principles, whose existence was dictated by celestial mechanics. On the other hand, historians of astronomy read the astronomical excursus as providing (...) a picture of Aristotle as an able astronomer, who made an important contribution to the theory of concentric celestial spheres of Eudoxus and Callippus by adding the counteracting spheres. The present article argues (a) that Aristotle purposefully turned to astronomy as the only mathematical science whose objects were correlative to the immaterial first substances or gods, the number of which had to be precisely determined by his own project of first philosophy; and (b) that he had no aspiration of improving the astronomical theory of his peers, contrary to an interpretation that first emerged with the Peripatetic exegete Sosigenes in the second century A.D. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Proclus’ criticism of the causality of Aristotle’s intellect is part of a general attack on Aristotle’s metaphysics. I show how Proclus criticises Aristotle for rejecting the One as a metaphysical principle and the metaphysical confusion that arises from this. Additionally, I claim that for Proclus Aristotle’s understanding of efficient causality differs from Plato’s and I discuss two of his arguments that Aristotle should have accepted the intellect as an efficient cause. As I show throughout, (...) Proclus differs in his approach to Aristotle from the harmonising agenda of Ammonius and Simplicius. (shrink)

Graduate Papers from the 2022 Joint SessionIt is often said that Aristotle takes geometrical objects to be absolutely unmovable and unchangeable. However, Greek geometrical practice does appeal to motion and change, and geometers seem to consider their objects apt to be manipulated. In this paper, I examine if and how Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry can account for the geometers’ practices and way of talking. First, I illustrate three different ways in which Greek geometry appeals to change. Second, I examine Aristotle’s (...) ontology of geometrical objects and argue that although the truth-makers of geometrical statements are in fact unmovable because they are properties of sensible objects, geometers ‘separate them in thought’ and treat them as substances apt to be modified. Finally, I examine whether allowing for the possibility of manipulating these semi-fictional geometrical individuals creates problems for the applicability of geometry. I find that it does not, insofar as one accepts that geometry is not meant to track physical change but merely to study the instantaneous geometrical configuration of sensible bodies, and is thus only applicable at the instant. (shrink)

Special volume of "Thaumàzein - Rivista di Filosofia" dedicated to the theme of Socratic Eudaimonia and care for others. It is a multilingual volume comprising twenty papers divided into six sections with an introduction by Linda Napolitano. Edited by Santiago Chame, Donald Morrison, and Linda Napolitano. -/- Despite the appearances given by certain texts, the moral psychology of Socrates needs not imply selfishness. On the contrary, a close look at passages in Plato and Xenophon (see Plato, Meno 77-78; Protagoras 358; (...) Gorgias 466-468; Euthydemus 278; Lysis 219; Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9, 4-5) suggests that the “egoist”’s welfare depends upon the welfare of others (i.e. family, friends or the whole city). Since the welfare of his family, friends and city is part of his own eudaimonìa, the “egoist” (phìlautos) has a direct and intrinsic motive to promote the welfare of these others. -/- This multilingual issue explores the role that other peoples’ welfare plays in Socratic ethics. Special attention is paid to test-cases in which the principle that moral action is always good only for the agent seems to have no validity. I.e., under which circumstances is the self-sacrifice for the sake of others (such as the soldier’s self-sacrifice on the battlefield) good for the agent (as in Alcibiades I 115a-116d)? Essays deal with contradictions or tensions of this sort, and relate them to more general views on eudaimonìa held within Socratic literature. Comparison between different Socratic authors is used as a means to identify the distinctive features of Socratic eudaimonìa if compared to other Greek theories of happiness, such as the Aristotelian theory of philautìa (NE IX, 1166a-1166b; 1168a-1169b). (shrink)

We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s exposition between views of democratic justice as, in one sense, based on equality ‘according to worth’ (...) and in another based on arithmetic equality. Balot, we contend, misconstrues our original argument when he represents us as claiming that, according to Aristotle, the injustice which leads agents to engage in stasis exists entirely in their own minds. We did not and do not hold that view and therefore (pace Balot) are in no way committed to any of its alleged implications. Balot’s misunderstanding on that point entails a wholesale misrepresentation of our original argument. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aristotle’s account of friendship can be applied equally to cases of friendship in association and personal friendship. It argues that both types of friendship are similar insofar as both are primarily concerned with the common good that serves as the basis of the friendship. This notion of the common good is what allows Aristotle to draw a connection between personal relationships, the more circumscribed associations, and the political association. This focus on the common good allows one (...) to look to the political association to inform one’s understanding of both friendship and justice in both the smaller associations and in personal relationships. (shrink)

A number of recent articles1 have revived scholarly interest in the ancient biographies of Aristotle and catalogues of his writings, a subject that has otherwise been almost entirely stagnating since the mid 1980’s. A key source for investigating this field is On Aristotle’s Life, Testament and Writings by a certain Ptolemy, a work lost in its original Greek version (Vita Ptolemaei Graeca, henceforth VPG) but extant in an Arabic translation (Vita Ptolemaei Arabice versa, VPA). A manuscript of VPA has been (...) long known to scholarship but no complete critical edition of the work is available at present. A comprehensive philological treatment of VPA and a reconstruction of its Greek source text has been recently described as “arguably the most urgent desideratum of research into the early transmission of Aristotle[’]s philosophy” (Falcon 2017). The present thesis aims to fill this gap by introducing a new MS of VPA and presenting a translation and study of the work based on my forthcoming critical edition. Despite focussing on an Arabic source, this thesis can be described as a piece of Classical scholarship in that it addresses two pressing issues pertaining to this field of studies: (i) the extent to which VPG can be reconstructed from its surviving translation, and (ii) the identity and philosophical orientation of the author of the Greek version. The former problem is tackled by means of a detailed philological investigation of VPA and the surviving Greek and Latin testimonies; it appears that VPA mostly reflect the content of its lost source text in an accurate way, although several passages were abridged or left out and others interpolated. The discussion of the latter problem involves a comparison of the reconstructed VPG with other Greek philosophical texts, which indicates that the work must be placed in the early 1st-mid 2nd c. AD. The most probable identification of VPG’s author emerging from our analysis is that with the astronomer and eclectic philosopher Claudius Ptolemy. Noteworthy by-products of the present thesis are the discovery of what is possibly a new fragment of Hermippus of Smyrna’s (fl. second half of the 3rd c. BC) Life of Aristotle and the recovery of a hitherto unnoticed Neoplatonic biography of Aristotle surviving in Arabic only. Also, it was possible to identify an Überlieferungsgemeinschaft in Greek manuscripts of Aristotle where the order of the biological works may be influenced by VPG’s pinax of his writings. A number of issues pertaining to VPG and VPA could not be addressed within the context of this thesis. The question of VPG’s sources is only summarily dealt with, and the text shows some more potential for retrieving information on lost Hellenistic works. Also, no investigation of VPG’s place in the Greek tradition of literary biographies has been undertaken. This is due to the fact that the relevant sections of VPA have emerged as the least faithful ones to its Greek original; too many variants would have to be carefully assessed before proceeding to plausible conclusions. Furthermore, it should be stressed now that, when dealing with information on Aristotle’s life preserved in VPG-VPA, we are never concerned with the historicity of the reports, as we rather focus on how they can be used to gain insight into Ptolemy and his work. The method adopted in this thesis is a purely philological one, inspired by the works of German Graeco-Arabists of the late 19th c. Graeco-Arabic sources are notorious for their complicated textual history, and VPG-VPA is no exception to this rule; therefore, philological rigour represents the only way to deal with a variety of issues inherent in the primary sources investigated. Most 20th c. scholarly contributions on VPG-VPA refrained from engaging with the pioneering reconstructions of Quellenforscher and in some cases even dismissed them a priori, thus producing a season of unoriginal studies on VPG-VPA. But hindsight makes it possible to spot the pitfalls the Germans could not see, and their partially valid results should be carefully examined, corrected whenever necessary and built upon with philological diligence. This thesis follows a linear development and chapters tend to build on each other. The natural first step is introducing the primary Arabic (ch. 2) and Greek sources (ch. 3), which makes it possible to understand the apparatus to the translation of VPA based on our forthcoming critical edition (ch. 4). Subsequently, the most important scholarly contributions on VPG and VPA shall be scrutinised (ch. 5). The first part of our study of the text consists in an analysis of the relation between the transmitted Arabic text and the lost Greek source, which allows to determine to what degree VPA can replace VPG in an investigation of the latter’s origin and features (ch. 6). Building on this, the question of VPG’s sources is addressed, albeit summarily (ch. 7). The last section contextualises VPG against the background of the bibliographical tradition of the Imperial Era and attempts an identification of the work’s author based its philosophical content (ch. 8). (shrink)

This book presents a (new) attempt to apply the notion of an underlying logic to Aristotle’s Organon and certain passages of the Metaphysics. The author situates his approach as part of a ‘deductio...

In Metaphysics M, Aristotle aims to refute the Platonic view that mathematical objects are substantially prior to sensible things. For Aristotle, mathematical objects are the abstracted attributes of sensible substances required for geometrical analysis and proof. Yet, despite this derivative status of the objects of mathematics, Aristotle insists that they are logically prior to individual substances. This paper examines the distinction between logical and substantial priority, arguing that it underwrites Aristotle’s conception of mathematical necessity and explanation.

Posing qualia as the mark of the mental presents problems for both reductionist and non-reductionist views of the mind. An alternative platform to understand the ontology of mental states is presented using Polo's retrieval of Aristotle's notion of energeia. I propose that mental states are characterized in terms of temporal integration, a feature of mental states that happen in time but do not require duration in time. Other features like simultaneity, commensurability, and non-failure are derived from this 'zero-time' that characterizes (...) mental states. Some consequences that the 'zero-time' approach entails for a theory of the mind, especially for our understanding of the relationships between consciousness and intentionality and the structure of the mind, are presented. (shrink)

Even if political theorists rarely read him, Italian political thinker, Marsilius of Padua, presents one of the most radical theories of the multitude prior to Machiavelli and Spinoza. This article reconstructs Marsilius of Padua's political theory of the multitude in his Defender of Peace and pays special attention to two main sources from which Marsilius frames his theory: Aristotle and Ibn Rushd. Compared to Aristotle, Marsilius advances a more epistemic view of the multitude as a lawmaker. Marsilius’ ideas on the (...) multitude also depend on Ibn Rushd's theory of collective knowledge and, to a certain extent, on his position on natural law. (shrink)

In Aristotle’s world there is no God to answer our prayers (euchê) and yet prayers follow the excellent city of the Politics like a shadow. Nonetheless, as far as I know, people have been content to narrow the focus of investigation to Aristotle’s utopia, its plausibility, structure and infrastructure, leaving prayers out of the picture. The most prayers themselves seem to deserve is a footnote or so. The result is that attention is switched away from the most basic questions: What (...) is the function of practical reason that prayers are meant to perform and why could not, or should not, that function be carried out by deliberate choices, wishes, and action plans? Prayers matter, and matter a lot, so I will argue, for they mirror our understanding of constitutive moral luck. The legislators and the rulers who ignore or overlook this truth are theoretically incompetent and politically perilous. (shrink)

Philoponus has been identified as the founder in dynamics of the theory of impetus, an inner force impressed from without, which, in its later recurrence, has been hailed as a scientific revolution. His commentary is translated here without the previously translated excursus, the Corollary on Void, also available in this series. Philoponus rejects Aristotle's attack on the very idea of void and of the possibility of motion in it, even though he thinks that void never occurs in fact. Philoponus' argument (...) was later to be praised by Galileo. This volume contains the first English translation of Philoponus' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, extensive explanatory notes and a bibliography. (shrink)

Aristotle recognises preternatural affections in numerous passages from his ethical writings, where he claims that some desires and emotions are beyond human nature, too strong for our nature to withstand, and that an action motivated by them is συγγνωμονικὸν: something excusable. However, there has been some reluctance among scholars to explicitly acknowledge that Aristotle recognised preternatural affections as a category of excuse in its own right. The aim of this paper is to remove the obstacles that stand in the way (...) of such a recognition, and to show that Aristotle developed a normative account of preternatural affections, based on the natural human capacity to withstand, allowing him to class them as genuine cases of βία, compulsion. (shrink)

Contextualizing his views of government and the political community within the Ancient World, this history of political philosophy explores the revolutionary ideas from Plato's greatest pupil that built the foundation for a democratic tradition that is still alive today.

This chapter discusses Javelli’s concept of Christian philosophy (philosophia Christiana), a project that has been completely neglected by modern scholarship. In fact, Javelli should be credited as one of the few Renaissance thinkers who attempted to build a systematic and consistent project of Christian philosophy, encompassing all three traditional branches of practical philosophy: ethics, economics and politics. He develops this conception in three interrelated treatises entitled, respectively, Philosophia moralis Christiana, Oeconomica Christiana, and Philosophia civilis sive politica Christiana, all published together (...) for the first time in Venice in 1540. In this chapter, I will focus in particular on the first, preliminary step of Javelli’s project, that is, the ‘dismantling’ of classical ethics, embodied first and foremost by Plato and Aristotle. By intermingling references to the Scriptures with discussions of the works by these two thinkers, Javelli offers a point-by-point refutation of the main tenets of classical ethics, concluding that both Platonism and Aristotelianism are equally useless for the development of a genuinely Christian philosophy. In his philosophically grounded confutation of classical ethics, not only does Javelli echo arguments and motives already presented by Erasmus in his writings, but he also makes use of well-known allegations derived from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century comparationes of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will examine the place of the commentaries on Aristotle’s De sensu et sensato in Chrysostomus Javelli’s comprehensive exegetical treatment of the Aristotelian encyclopaedia. Javelli addressed Aristotle’s De sensu two times: at first, in his epitome published in 1531 in Venice; then, in his set of twenty-one quaestiones, the editio princeps of which was published posthumously in 1577 in Venice. Although it is not possible to establish the date of composition of these works, in the first part (...) I will focus on some paratextual and intertextual elements to bring out the close connection between the epitomes and the Quaestiones. Javelli was a versatile writer, capable of using very different sources and harmonising them in order to make the Aristotelian text understandable to his students: in fact, a concern for teaching underpins all his exegetical works. These features will emerge vividly in the second part of this chapter, where I will take a closer look at one of the quaestiones, which concerns the intromission and extramission of visual species. (shrink)

This chapter discusses Javelli’s frequently reprinted Compendium logicae (1540). The purpose of the work, as Javelli himself states at the beginning, is to introduce neophytes and novices to the study of logic. I focus in particular on the section devoted to demonstrative syllogism. Besides being traditionally overlooked by scholars, this doctrine was usually omitted in the scholastic tradition of the summulae logicales, on the grounds that it was too complex to be summarised and explained appropriately. By providing a thorough account (...) of Aristotle’s doctrine of demonstrative syllogism, Javelli departs significantly from the previous interpretive tradition, and he does not always succeed in presenting the theory in a succinct and palatable way. After a brief introduction, I set Javelli’s Compendium against the background of the Dominicans’ exegetical tradition on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics in the fifteenth century. I especially discuss the works of Dominicus of Flanders, Franciscus Thomae, and Girolamo Savonarola, before delving deeply into Javelli’s Compendium logicae. The chapter concludes with a comparison of this work to the commentary of Javelli’s confrère Francesco Silvestri, which offers an outstanding example of erudition and philological rigour. A final appendix provides a transcription of sections from the logical works of Dominicus of Flanders, Tommaso de Vio, Javelli and Francesco Silvestri. (shrink)

L'idee d'une multiplicite de causes, introduite dans la philosophie grecque a partir des dialogues de Platon, a trouve chez Aristote sa realisation grandiose et complexe.La discussion sur les causes a l'epoque hellenistique et imperiale confirme l'importance et l'extreme richesse de cette idee. Le titre du volume veut souligner les rapports dialectiques, parfois conflictuels et souvent polemiques, que les doctrines de la causalite de cette epoque presentent entre elles, aussi bien de maniere independante que et par rapport a la systematisation aristotelicienne. (...) Les principaux auteurs (Theophraste, Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Plotin) et les principales ecoles philosophiques (Peripatetique, Stoicienne, Epicurienne, Sceptique) de l'age hellenistique et imperial y ont ete abordes dans le but de produire un apercu le plus complet et le plus articule possible du probleme de la causalite a cette epoque. (shrink)

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira, Macedonia. He went to Athens and entered Plato's Academy when he was eighteen. He remained there until Plato's death in about 347 BC, when he left Athens to spend the next five years at Assos in Asia Minor and at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, working on philosophy and biology. In 343 he was invited to return to Macedonia to tutor the son of Philip II of Macedonia, the future Alexander the Great. (...) This lasted three or four years. After a further period at Stagira, Aristotle returned to Athens where he opened a philosophical school at the Lyceum or Peripatos. On the death of Alexander in 323 there was anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens, and to avoid the same fate as Socrates, Aristotle took refuge in Chalcis on the island of Euboea, leaving the school in the charge of his pupil Theophrastus. He died the following year. (shrink)

Radulphus Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis is a major work written in the early 1300s which treated Aristotle's text devoted to the theory of the syllogism. Brito, one of the most influential of the group of medieval thinkers known as the Modistae, examines both categorical and hypothetical syllogisms. In the text offered here, based on six known manuscripts which are complete or nearly complete, Brito was critical of many of the theories of his contemporary, Simon of Faversham. Brito edited (...) his work several times; there are at least two versions which indicate Brito returned to this material during his long career at the university in Paris. This volume is the first critical text edition of Brito's Quaestiones super Priora analytica Aristotelis and will therefore be of great interest to those studying the history of logic and its development during the medieval period. (shrink)

Aristotle notoriously begins his examination of being in the sense of dunamis and energeia in Metaphysics Theta with what he describes as the sense that is ‘most dominant’ but not useful for his present aim. He proceeds to define the not-useful sense of dunamis as “the principle of change in something else or in itself qua other”, along with other senses derived from this primary sense. But what then is the useful sense? All that Aristotle tells us at the outset (...) is that it is a sense that extends “beyond things spoken of only in relation to motion” and nowhere in Book Theta does he explicitly identify the useful sense as such. This has allowed for very different interpretations of the useful sense in the literature, the primary ones being that it is (1) ‘possibility’, (2) the potential to receive a form, (3) being-potentially-x understood modally as encompassing all specific senses of dunamis, and (4) capacity for substantial change. The present paper argues that there are significant problems with all of these suggestions and defends an identification of the useful sense of dunamis with the sense that Aristotle explicitly opposes to the not-useful sense at the start of Theta 8: phusis (‘nature’). This goes hand-in-hand with an identification of the useful sense of energeia with ‘activity’ as distinguished from motion/change at the end of Theta 6. What makes these senses of dunamis and energeia the useful ones for Aristotle’s present aim is that they are required to explain fully the priority of energeia to dunamis in substance defended in Theta 8, they support the identification in Theta 9 of energeia with the good, and they explain the unity of the only substances that Aristotle recognizes as being genuinely substances: natural living substances. (shrink)

This work is an attempt to decipher the therapeutic essence of the Hellenic theater through the prism of "catharsis", starting with the Athenian orgy, when theatrical performances turned into a tool for collective healing. The article deals with the theoretical views of Aristotle, in whose aesthetics catharsis has become the main concept that testifies to the healing abilities of the Greek theater to purify and harmonize the personality. The author shows how these ideas can be used in modern theatrical art, (...) helping to identify and eliminate the mental problems of today's audience. Dramatic "catharsis", named and analyzed in the theoretical system of Aristotle, in turn, became a theoretical generalization of the healing abilities of the Greek theater. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the fact that the study of the essence and form of healing in the Greek theater can be used as a theoretical basis for the development of modern drama therapy. The work uses an interdisciplinary approach, a cultural-historical method and the principle of comparative analysis in the 70-80s. In the twentieth century, drama therapy began to be explored as a separate discipline that awakened creativity and imagination, contributed to the reunification of people with their inner world, removed the burden of difficult experiences, changed behavior and life circumstances, thus revealing the healing abilities of theatrical "catharsis". The rise of modern theater therapy reflects a new direction in the development of psychotherapy and theater, as well as a return to the ancient traditions of healing and artistic creativity and the development of fresh ideas and new creative ideas based on them. (shrink)