Monism in Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.3–5

Scholars have often seen Parmenides as entirely opposed to earlier materialistic philosophy. In this paper I argue that what is more striking in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book I is the degree of continuity that he sees between Parmenides and the material monists. I explore this coupling of Parmenides with the material monists to understand better what he takes to be distinctive and problematic with Parmenides’ monism.

Aristotle’s Physics

The word physics comes from the Greek word for nature: phusis. As Aristotle himself uses it, the Greek term translated as physics in this context refers to natural science as a whole, including cosmology, biology, chemistry and meteorology, as well as the sort of investigation of the fundamental elements of things, and the laws that govern their behavior, for which we use the term today. The work we call “Aristotle’s Physics” was not published as a book in his own day, and it was not intended for publication as it stands. Instead, like his Metaphysics, it is a compilation—probably by Aristotle himself—of a number of separate writings: they may have been research papers and/or the basis for lectures (the ancient title for the Physics is Lectures on Natural Science, but there is no evidence that this title goes back to Aristotle). Nonetheless, the writings which make up the Physics exhibit a clear thematic unity. Aristotle explains “nature” as “an internal principle of change and rest”: change is thus central to the idea of nature as he understands it. Linked by the notions of nature and change, these writings are all concerned with foundational issues in natural science as Aristotle conceives of it. It is clear from other works that Aristotle took natural science as a whole to be a systematic body of knowledge which should be presented and studied in a systematic order (see Meteorologica I.1 338a20-26 and 333a5-9); in this order, the material in Physics comes first. Aristotle’s other works on natural science, such as De Caelo (On the Heavens), De Generatione et Corruptione (On Coming to Be and Ceasing to Be), De Anima (On the Soul), and De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals) constantly make reference, explicitly or implicitly, to notions developed and argued for in the Physics—most especially to matter and form; the four types of cause, chance, teleology, and hypothetical necessity; and the nature of change and agency. Matter and form, and the four causes, also play a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics: see especially the so-called central books (Books Ζ, Η, and Θ), and Book Λ, chapters 1–5. The Physics is divided into eight Books (perhaps corresponding to the length of a scroll of the papyrus on which Aristotle’s works would have been written); in the Renaissance each Book was divided into chapters by the publishers of printed versions, and these are still used for ease of reference.

The Aporetic Method of Aristotle’s Metaphysics B in Damascius’ De Principiis: A Case Study of the First aporia

Damascius has become well-known in recent scholarship for his unique, radical use of the aporetic method, both to highlight the inherent limits of human thought and to reveal crucial tensions in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Though much attention has been paid to the subjective or skeptical aspects of Damascius’ aporiai, little has been noted of the parallels between Damascius’ aporetic strategy in the De Principiis and Aristotle’s own in Metaphysics B. This article analyzes the parallel by looking at Aristotle’s aim for aporiai in Metaphysics B.1 and closely comparing, as a case study, the De Principiis’ first aporia alongside Metaphysics B’s first aporia. Despite Damascius’ aporia dealing with different principles compared to Aristotle’s, the aporetic method for both ultimately exposes the limitations of thought and, exactly in the domain of these limitations, clarifies our concepts in relating to reality and attaining determinate understanding of principles.

Deduction and Common Notions in Alexander’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics A 1–2

In this paper I explore the ways in which Alexander of Aphrodisias employs and develops so-called ‘common notions’ as reliable starting points of deductive arguments. He combines contemporary developments in the Stoic and Epicurean use of common notions with Aristotelian dialectic, and axioms. This more comprehensive concept of common notions can be extracted from Alexander’s commentary on Metaphysics A 1–2. Alexander puts Aristotle’s claim that ‘all human beings by nature desire to know’ in a larger deductive framework, and adds weight to Aristotle’s use of the common understanding of the notion of ‘wisdom’. Finally I will indicate how these upgraded common notions are meant to play an important role in the general framework of metaphysics as a science.

FOCAL DEPENDENCE, LOGICAL PRIORITY AND THE UNITY OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS

ABSTRACT A long-standing problem in Aristotelian scholarship concerns the question of how to reconcile Aristotle’s twofold description of metaphysics as ontology (the universal science of being qua being) and theology (the science of the changeless and separate substance). An important attempt to answer this question (advanced first by G. Patzig) consists in saying that the changeless and separate substance is focally prior to (or the focal meaning of) substance and therefore to being in general (since substance is focally prior to being in general). This article aims to refute this kind of approach to the problem of the unity of Aristotle’s metaphysics by arguing that (i) relations of focal meaning entail the logical (definitional) priority of the prior items over the dependent items standing in such relations; (ii) the changeless and separate substance is not logically prior to the other types of substances distinguished by Aristotle; and, therefore, (iii) the changeless and separate substance is not focally prior to (the focal meaning of) substance.

Ibuanyidanda and the Principle of Non-Contradiction: A Logico-Metaphysica Discourse of Asouzu’s Complementary

Ibuanyidanda and The Principle of Non-Contradiction aims at instantiating the claims of Asouzu’s Complementary Reflection that whatever exists serves as a missing link of reality. Reality has been construed within a bifurcating frame of mind, a project that was characterized by the elitist mindset of Plato and was further espoused in Aristotle’s philosophy of essence. For Aristotle, the wise is destined to rule the unwise. This divisive mentality permeates the entire Western culture. Unfortunately, Placid Tempels made some African scholars to erroneously believe and argue that the Western understanding of being is static, while that of Africa is dynamic. This anomaly, among other things, is what Ibuanyidanda as a philosophy and a method of doing philosophy sets out to address. Ibuanyidanda ontology contends that reality can be better understood from the complementary point of view. The principle of non-contradiction championed by Aristotle and the Western scholars sees the opposite of being as non-being, but Asouzu’s complementary reflection sees the opposite of being as to be alone (ka so mu di). This work holds that ibuanyidanda complementary reflection is capable of handling the problems of contradiction that are apparent in the Western mode of philosophising. Opposites do not contradict themselves, they complement each other. Ibuanyidanda philosophy and its position are contrary to the views of Aristotle’s metaphysics and open to sight ontological updating - a good recipe for the advancement of 21st-century philosophizing. Analytic, textual, contextual, and historical methods are employed in this work.

The Philological Thesis

This essay addresses the principal form and practice for linguistic domination, philology, to draw out a sense in which philology discombobulates the stabilizing terms it privileges and sends out at the world. This essay traces several moments in a history of the disorganization of linguistic and social form—in the poetic writing of Paul Celan and the Arabic-language translations of Celan offered by the Iraqi poet Khālid al-Ma‘ālī; in Walter Benjamin’s essayistic writing on language and the law; in the tenth-century Arabic-language philosopher Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī; and in Aristotle’s Metaphysics—to suggest the ways in which philology becomes a practice for linguistic indistinction and indefinition. Because language, as philology, ceases to be subordinated to its ends (history, sense, the subject), it becomes a discordant social form; because it disorders the terms privileged in the modern institutions for reading, it speaks to us of a form of life that is obscured in the privileging of the ends to which language is, repeatedly, constrained to be understood.