“Tracing the Origins of Beings: Cosmogony and Anthropogony in On Flesh”, in D. Manetti, L. Perilli and A. Roselli (eds.), Ippocrate e gli altri. Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome (2022), 73-88. (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Eight comments on the article of Marianna Benetatou “Does Plato outline a mathematical-reductionist model of the physical world? The creation of the world in the Timaeus and Aristotle’s criticism in De Anima” are: 1. Aristotle’s and Plato’s indispensable contributions to the world culture; 2. Plato as a philosopher of science; 3. Integral type of the “Classical Greece” cultural period; 4. The essential metaphor of Sleep (aimless) processes and Awake (purposeful) activity; 5. Entelecheia, energeia, topos – Aristotle’s crucial notions that are not included into the reviewed article; 6. Aristotle’s Biocosmological teleology (Organicism) vs Plato’s biocosmological teleology (organicism); 7. Plato’s foundations for modern European scholars’ contributions and the current scientific revolution; 8. George Chapouthier’s comments.
The Heart as the Seat of Soul: The Problem of Unity in Aristotle's Biology
In this paper I consider the problem of unity in Aristotle's biological works. I begin by developing Aristotle's theory of definitional unity in Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics Z and H. Using these texts, I argue that Allen Gotthelf and David Charles correctly identify two problems of unity: (1) the " vertical " unity of a linear series of differentia and (2) the " horizontal " unity of a simultaneous series of differentia. I then consider Furth's answer to the first problem, and Charles' answer to the second: vertical series of differentia are unified because the final differentia hypothetically necessitates the preceding ones, while simultaneous differentia are unified by finding a single cause that necessitates them all. I then turn to the biological works, where Aristotle fails to enact Charles' solution, positing several causally basic differentia, which are neither unified nor all part of the animals definition. Specifically, some differentia are caused by the material substratum of the animal, which differentia will not be included in its definition. In response to this latter problem, I argue that because the heart is the causal instrument of the soul in its actualization as a living animal, the causal role of the heart physically manifests the causal role of the soul. This allows us to identify which final differentia belong in the essence of an animal. It does not, however, allow us to determine how these final differentia are themselves unified, and so does not explain how to unify simultaneous differentia.
Peitho. Examina Antiqua, 2021
Aristotle’s notion of qualitative interaction ruling both the process of mixture and the process of reciprocal elemental transmutation is based upon the idea of a physical contrariety endowed with two extremes and a wide central area where the opposite forces reach different equilibrium points (i.e., the so-called mixtures) or can be present to the fullest degree (in this case we do not have a mixture, but an element). Differently from previous scholarship which attributes this notion specifically to Aristotle, we have found, in a text which Aristotle seems to have been acquainted with, the Hippocratic De victu, an incipient structure of a contrariety endowed with extremes and a central area where opposite forces meet and yield respective equilibrium points, mixtures, which, as in Aristotle, give an account of the variety of beings existing in the world. In this article, we suggest the possibility that in the development of the Aristotelian thinking about elemental and qualitative d...
Common to Body and Soul in the Parva Naturalia (Aristotle, Sens. 1 436b1-12)
Common to Body and Soul (Edited by R.A.H. King), 2006
The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen, including papers on Parmenides on thinking (E. Hussey, R. Dilcher), Empedocles' Love (D. O'Brien), tripartition in Plato (T. Buchheim), Aristotle (C. Rapp, T. Johansen, P.-M. Morel), Peripatetics after Aristotle (R. Sharples), Hellenistic Philosophy (C. Rapp, C. Gill), and Galen (R. J. Hankinson).
2021
The present edition of Alexander's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics is the outcome of a project (GO 2467/1-1) which was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from January 2015 to August 2017. I am extremely grateful to Oliver Primavesi (Munich) and the anonymous referees for supporting my project. Because of the generous funding from the DFG, I was able to travel through Italy for seven months and to inspect in situ thirteen out of twenty-three manuscripts that contain Alexander's commentary on the Metaphysics, then to spend almost two years in Paris, working at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in which a further seven manuscripts of the commentary reside, and at the Centre Léon Robin (CNRS), where I fruitfully discussed problematic aspects of the textual tradition of the commentary. The edition was brought to completion in the framework of the project Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina under the auspices of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften during the years 2018-2021. I would like to express my warmest thanks to the colleagues and friends who helped me with my research, through discussion and practical support, in Italy and
ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS AS THEANTHROPOLOGY
Kronos, 2018
What follows is a speculative development of ideas presented in Aristotle: Man and Metaphysics, a profound but still unpublished work by the late Jonael Schickler, 1 and Aristotle's Man: Speculations upon Aristotelian Anthropology, 2 by Stephen R.L. Clark. Aristotle's philosophy is governed by a structural tension that is, in certain ways, akin to what John Milbank has called transorganicity: "an integral yet discontinuous unity, (...) an integrity sustained despite an interruptive leap." 3 This discontinuous unity involves an "'addition' that is seen as paradoxically essential." 4 Schickler mentions three main instances of this structural tension: the relation between the intelligibly ordered cosmos and God, the relation between the human being's psychosomatic constitution and νοῦς, and the relation between the four elements and vital heat. To this, one can add, among others: the relation between the act of perception and its elements, and the relation in ἐπαγωγή (usually, and misleadingly, translated as "induction") between particular perceptions and the resulting universal. Schickler argues that this structural tension is most clearly articulated in Aristotle's philosophical anthropology, since "this is the location of his most important andphilosophicallyrevealingattemptstofindthecentralconclusionsofhismetaphysics mirrored in the structure of the empirical world." 5 He suggests that the focal tension in Aristotle'sthought istobe foundnot intherelation between divine νοῦς and the cosmos, butratherintherelationbetweendivineνοῦςandthehumanbeing. In Aristotle's anthropology, the basic pairs form/matter, activity/potency, and soul/body, are translated into a more articulated four-fold structure: a human being is astructurallyandfunctionallyunifiedwholecomprisingaphysicalbody,avegetative soul,asensitivesoul,andνοῦς.Thisneednotimplythereareseparatesouls,sincethe 1 This text was to be a chapter of Schickler's doctoral dissertation, published as J. Schickler, Metaphysics as Christology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Tragically, Schickler died in a train crash before submitting his completed dissertation.
Hardly anything seems more ordinary than the extended, concrete bodies populating the world of experience. Yet in explaining their manifest properties, physicists must appeal to entities radically unlike the bodies of our experience. Medieval Aristotelians too struggled to resolve tensions between the characteristics of the bodies we experience (corporeality), and the principle that accounts for the way bodies are (matter). This panel uncovers key difficulties that theorists of the High Middle Ages encountered when deploying Aristotelian notions of body to account for the bodies we experience. It thus offers a new window onto the fraying and reweaving of medieval paradigms of the physical world in the thirteenth century. The first three papers examine tensions within medieval paradigms of corporeality. Neil Lewis will explore medieval attempts to fit ‘body’ into the Aristotelian categorial scheme by distinguishing body as substance and quantified body. David Cory will examine the emergence of a ‘dual explanation’ of physical phenomena in terms of materiality and corporeality. Nicola Polloni will show how this duality raised questions about matter’s (un)knowability, putting its physical function into tension with its metaphysical limitations. The last two papers treat two cases, concerning bodily properties, that challenged Aristotelian paradigms among thirteenth-century Christian and Islamic intellectuals. Therese Cory will examine how Parisian theorists sought to integrate light into their paradigm of corporeality. Emma Gannagé will examine how the post-Avicennian medical tradition handled the problem of bodies exhibiting secondary qualities (magnetism or healing properties) beyond those manifested by all bodies in common.