This article, drawing on selected feminist magazines of the 1980s, particularly Feminist Arts News (FAN) and GEN, offers a textual ‘braiding’ of narratives to re-present a history of Black British feminism. I attempt to chart a history of Black British feminist inheritance while proposing the politics of (other)mothering as a politics of potential, pluralistic and democratic community building, where Black thought and everyday living carry a primary and participant role. The personal—mothering our children—is the political, affording a nurturing of alterity (...) through a politics of care that is fundamentally antiracist and antisexist. I attempt to show how Black feminist thought can significantly contribute to democracy in the present and how Black British history and thought, as fundamentally antiracist and anticolonial, can generate a reinvention much needed in the present of a shared British history. I argue for feminist intervention premised upon a politics of care, addressing through activist mothering the urgency of Black absence from prestigious institutions. Such debilitating absence in Britain inhibits the development of scholarship, distorts feminist history and seriously concerns potential Black feminists. From diverse texts, I develop a genealogical narrative supplemented through memory work. This ‘gathering and re-using’ privileges Black women's theorising as a crucial component of the methodological metissage, which includes auto-theorising to develop ideas of resemblance in relation to Black British feminism and feminist kinship. The resultant ‘braiding’, I suggest after Lionnet, questions the absence of intersubjective spaces for reflection on Black British feminist praxis, indicating a direction for British feminists of all complexions. Attentive to the 1980s as historical context while invoking the maternal, I consider what is required to engage generationally, counterwrite the academy and pursue a dynamic process of transformation within a transnational feminism that challenges Black British absence from academic knowledge production, while nurturing its presence. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Place of GA in Aristotle's Philosophy Male and Female as archai The Nature of Sperma The Transmission of Soul: GA II.3 Reproductive Hylomorphism Inheritance Individual Forms Four Causes of Generation Notes Bibliography.

This edition includes new translations of Aristotle's _Generation of Animals_ along with _History of Animals I_ and _Parts of Animals I_. The translations are noteworthy for their consistency and accuracy, and fit seamlessly with the other volumes in the series, enabling Anglophone readers to read Aristotle's works in a way previously not possible. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms guides the reader to places where focused discussion of (...) key notions occurs. (shrink)

A general article discussing philosophical issues arising in connection with Aristotle's "Generation of Animals" (Chapter from Blackwell's Companion to Aristotle).

Generation of Animals is one of Aristotle's most mature, sophisticated, and carefully crafted scientific writings. His overall goal is to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of how animals reproduce, including a study of their reproductive organs, what we would call fertilization, embryogenesis, and organogenesis. In this book, international experts present thirteen original essays providing a philosophically and historically informed introduction to this important work. They shed light on the unity and structure of the Generation of (...) Animals, the main theses that Aristotle defends in the work, and the method of inquiry he adopts. They also open up new avenues of exploration of this difficult and still largely unexplored work. The volume will be essential for scholars and students of ancient philosophy as well as of the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

In the summer of 1983, a group of scholars met in Williamstown, MA for a workshop directed by Allan Gotthelf. Many of the papers presented at this meeting grew into Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology. The aim of the workshop and volume to follow was to engage with Aristotle’s biological works from a genuinely philosophical perspective. That volume was a watershed moment for the “biological turn” in Aristotle studies.The present volume is compiled in the same spirit, growing out of several (...) conferences and collaborations spearheaded by the late Gotthelf, who was to co-edit the volume until his death in 2013. It presents a range of recent scholarship on the Generation of Animals rather... (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty recognized that phenomenology's methodological coherence required that it reject anthropocentricity and extend its scope beyond the human realm. But he also recognized that this does not change the central role played by human consciousness in phenomenology, which he thus construed as a practical, humanistic project based on 'ontological faith'. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological contributions concerning animals, then, and in particular his notion of 'interanimality', need to be understood as 'generative' contributions toward the realization of a singular common world. While this (...) does not address issues of interspecific justice directly, it does reveal the underlying ontology of interspecificity to be a normative projection of a decentred humanism, an insight that has the potential to productively rethink the nature of our ethical relations with animals. (shrink)

Despite the renewed interest in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals in recent years, the subject matter of GA V, its preferred mode(s) of explanation, and its place in the treatise as a whole remain misunderstood. Scholars focus on GA I-IV, which explain animal generation in terms of efficient-final causation, but dismiss GA V as a mere appendix, thinking it to concern (a) individual, accidental differences among animals, which are (b) purely materially necessitated, and (c) are only tangentially (...) related to the topics discussed in the earlier books. In this paper, we defend an alternative and more integrated account of GA V by closely examining Aristotle’s methodological introduction in GA V.1 778a16-b19 and his teleological explanation of the differences of teeth in GA V.8. We argue for the unity of both GA V and of GA as a whole and present a more nuanced theory of teleological explanation in Aristotle’s biology. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of female nature has received mostly negative treatment, emphasising what he says females cannot do. Building on recent research, this book comprehensively revises such readings, setting out the complex and positive role played by the female in Aristotle's thought with a particular focus on the longest surviving treatise on reproduction in the ancient corpus, the Generation of Animals. It provides new interpretations of the nature of Aristotle's sexism, his theory of male and female interaction in (...) class='Hi'>generation, and his account of inherited features. It also discusses a range of more general issues which can and should be re-examined in light of Aristotle's account of female animals: his methodology, hylomorphism, teleology and psychology. Aristotle on Female Animals will be valuable to all those interested in Aristotle's philosophy and the history of gender. (shrink)

In this article, I present in a systematic way Aristotle’s understanding of movement (kinêsis) as efficient cause in the Generation of Animals. This aspect of movement is not disclosed in the approach to movement as an incomplete activity in contrast to energeia, which has been extensively discussed in the literature. I explain in which sense movement is the efficient cause of generation and how this movement is related to the other factors, in particular the source of movement, (...) the seminal fluid, pneuma, and the vital heat, as well as to the form and the soul. The role of movement as efficient cause of generation shows how, for Aristotle, form and soul are inseparable from matter and movement in nature. Explaining the role of movement as efficient cause of generation also helps to make sense of the multiplicity of factors involved in the efficient causality of generation. The key to articulating these factors with one another is the identity of form of the generative movement, which is specifically the same in the source, in the tools, and in the substance that is coming into being. (shrink)

Aristotle refers to some animal kinds as μέγιστα γένη, or greatest kinds. The goal of this paper is to make clear the nature and significance of these kinds. I argue that Aristotle thinks of greatest kinds as the most general kinds within a specified domain. I then consider the fact that Aristotle’s discussion of animals’ reproductive parts and modes of reproduction in Generation of Animals is organized around divisions related to the cause of each of the features (...) being explained. I conclude that, while classification is an important goal in Aristotle’s biological treatises, it is of little significance that some of the kinds he identifies are referred to as greatest kinds. The important divisions are, for Aristotle, the divisions that best serve his goal of explaining the various features of animals and these divisions sometimes group together and sometimes cut across the commonly recognized, including the greatest, animal kinds. (shrink)

Given that they are chance events, there can be no scientific demonstration or knowledge of monsters. There are still, however, many recognizable elements of scientific explanation in Aristotle's Generation of Animals Book IV chapter 4. What happens in cases of monsters and deformities occurs in the process of generation, and there is much that we can know scientifically about this process—working from the animal’s essential attributes outward to factors that influence these processes. In particular, we find Aristotle (...) looking for and investigating whether “for the most part” correlations are causally relevant and linked to essence. Even though the birth of monsters is scientifically inexplicable, the features of animals that tend to produce them can be known about. I will explain how it is that producing more than one offspring per birth is a knowable feature of a kind. This feature, along with others, can then give us a much better grasp on what happens in particular instances of monstrous birth. (shrink)

There are two different notions of seed at work in the Generation of Animals: seed as the spermatic residue, which concerns only the male and the female generative contributions, and seed as the kuêma and first mixture of the two generative contributions. The latter is a notion of seed common to plants and animals. The passage in GA I.18, 724b12–22 where Aristotle distinguishes between these two notions of seed has been mistakenly discredited as inauthentic or simply as (...) irrelevant for understanding the seeds of animals. On the other hand, recent studies have rather focused on the seed as spermatic residue, paying little attention to the notion of seed as kuêma. In this paper I defend the authenticity and relevance of this passage and show how understanding the notion of seed as kuêma is essential to have a complete picture of Aristotle’s account of seed. This common notion of seed makes sense of Aristotle’s otherwise puzzling use of the word “sperma” to designate the seeds of plants, the kuêma, the fertilized eggs, and the first mixture of the two generative contributions. It also proves helpful in determining what the word ‘sperma’ stands for in key passages, such as Metaph. IX.7. (shrink)

HOW DOES LIFE BEGIN? How is it and why is it that a child comes into being? To answer these questions about life and its origins requires a system of presuppositions about a great many metaphysical matters, such as causation and its modes of operation, relations of identity and difference, and, perhaps above all, the transition from not-being to actualized existence. In his treatise, Generation of Animals, Aristotle takes up the theme of the origins of animal and human (...) life. His treatment of the subject is both empirical, offering descriptions of how the process occurs in nature, and metaphysical, pursuing the deeper how and answering questions about why it is that offspring are generated and how this phenomenon is meaningfully connected to the cosmos as a whole. (shrink)

Aristotle refers to some animal kinds as μέγιστα γένη, or greatest kinds. The goal of this paper is to make clear the nature and significance of these kinds. I argue that Aristotle thinks of greatest kinds as the most general kinds within a specified domain. I then consider the fact that Aristotle’s discussion of animals’ reproductive parts and modes of reproduction in Generation of Animals is organized around divisions related to the cause of each of the features (...) being explained. I conclude that, while classification is an important goal in Aristotle’s biological treatises, it is of little significance that some of the kinds he identifies are referred to as greatest kinds. The important divisions are, for Aristotle, the divisions that best serve his goal of explaining the various features of animals and these divisions sometimes group together and sometimes cut across the commonly recognized, including the greatest, animal kinds. (shrink)

This chapter is an examination of the way aporiai are employed in Aristotle’s scientific account of animal reproduction, and how they are resolved. I argue that – surprising as it may be, given what Aristotle says in Metaphysics B about the importance of going through aporiai – there seems to be nothing of much significance about his use of them, at least if we assume that genuine cases of aporiai are being tracked by use of aporia-language. I demonstrate this negative (...) thesis by systematically going through the examples. There seems to be no common purpose for which they are raised, they have no single type of structure, and they are not caused by any one sort of difficulty. (shrink)

This paper argues that focusing on Aristotle’s theory of generation as primarily ‘hylomorphic’ can lead to difficulties. This is especially evident when interpreting the association between the male and sentient soul at GA 2.5. If the focus is on the male’s contribution as form and the female’s as matter, then soul becomes divided into nutritive from female and sentient from male which makes little sense in Aristotle’s biological ontology. In contrast, by seeing Aristotle’s theory as ‘archēkinētic’, a process initiated (...) by the male, the development of nutritive and sentient capacities emerges as intertwined, neither capacity originating in only one sex. (shrink)

How do the variegated forms of sublunar substances arise in prime matter? Averroes throughout his life believed that “a principle from without” was involved, but changed his mind over its identity. While in an early period of his life he maintained that all forms emanate from the active intellect, he later discarded that metaphysical notion and sought to develop a more naturalistic, astrologically inspired account, which identified the heavenly bodies as the source of sublunar forms. Comparing different versions of Averroean (...) texts, this paper seeks to spell out how, in Averroes' view, the heavenly bodies generate forms in matter. Averroes claims that this is brought about by means of their “heats,” an answer that is however problematic seeing that in the Aristotelian cosmology the celestial realm is quality-less. The paper examines Averroes' ideas on the relationship between light and heat, concluding that the Commentator was unable to integrate the postulate that the heavenly bodies inform matter within his Aristotelian theory of matter. (shrink)

“How can it be that the female is both functional and a failure?”. Sophia Connell’s response comes in the form of a careful, thorough, and philosophically sensitive interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise on animal generation. By pursuing the topic of what Aristotle says about female animals and their role in reproduction, Connell casts light into many difficult corners of his theory: What does it mean to say that the male is the “hê archê [tês] kinêseos” of the generation? (...) How should we think of the motions in the semen that “construct” the embryo? Are these motions the same? According to Connell, they are not. The efficient cause of the generation is the male; he is the origin... (shrink)

Les treize articles publiés dans ce volume sont pour la plupart issus d’un colloque international sur la Génération des Animaux (GA) organisé à la Sorbonne en 2014 par A. Gotthelf (dont le décès est survenu en 2013) et D. Lefebvre. Dans le contexte du « biological turn » initié il y a quarante ans dans les études aristotéliciennes, ce traité est l’objet, depuis quelques années, d’une attention accrue, comme en témoignent les nouvelles traductions - en français par D. Lefebvre en (...) 2014 ; en ang... (shrink)

In this volume Smith examines the early modern science of generation, which included the study of animal conception, heredity, and fetal development. Analyzing how it influenced the contemporary treatment of traditional philosophical questions, it also demonstrates how philosophical pre-suppositions about mechanism, substance, and cause informed the interpretations offered by those conducting empirical research on animal reproduction. Composed of essays written by an international team of leading scholars, the book offers a fresh perspective on some of the basic problems in (...) early modern philosophy. It also considers how these basic problems manifested themselves within an area of scientific inquiry that had not previously received much consideration by historians of philosophy. (shrink)