Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aristotle

  • Accidental Sameness: Defending Hennessey Against My Objection

    Yesterday I made an objection to Richard Hennessey's neo-Aristotelian theory of accidental predication.  But this morning I realized that he has one or more plausible responses.  By the way, this post has, besides its philosophical purpose, a metaphilosophical one.  I will be adding support to my claim lately bruited that philosophy — the genuine article…

  • Comments on Richard Hennessey’s Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Predication

    Richard Hennessey of Gnosis and Noesis sketches a neo-Aristotelian theory of predication in Another Aristotelian Basis for a Neo-Aristotelian Anti-Realism in the Theory of Universals.  Drawing as he does upon my discussion in Scholastic Realism and Predication, he has asked me to comment on his post.  I will do so with pleasure. I first want to…

  • How Are Form and Matter Related in Compound Material Substances?

    Favoring as I do constituent ontology, I am sympathetic to that type of constituent ontology which is hylomorphic ontological analysis, as practiced by Aristotelians, Thomists, et al.  The obscurity of such fundamental  concepts as form, matter, act, potency, substance, and others is, however, troubling. Let's see if we can make sense of the relation between form…

  • Being Dead and Being Nonexistent, or: How to Cease to Exist without Dying

    In general, being dead and being nonexistent are not the same 'property' for an obvious reason: only that which was once alive can properly be said to be dead, and not everything was once alive.  Nevertheless, it might be thought that, for living things, to be is to be alive, and not to be is…

  • Ontological Analysis in Aristotle and Bergmann: Prime Matter Versus Bare Particulars

    Hardly anyone reads Gustav Bergmann any more, but since I read everything, I read Bergmann. It is interesting to compare his style of ontological analysis with that of the great hylomorphic ontologists, Aristotle and Aquinas. The distinguished Aristotelian Henry B. Veatch does some of my work for me in a fine paper, "To Gustav Bergmann: A…

  • A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle

    It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians.  What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification.  Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2.) Plato and Aristotle! These are not…

  • Aquinas on Why Being Cannot Be a Genus

    At 998b22 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle argues that being cannot be a genus. Thomas Aquinas gives his version of the argument in Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, ch. 25, para. 6. I find the presentation of the doctor angelicus clearer than that of the philosophus. After quoting Thomas' argument, I will offer a rigorous reconstruction and…

  • I Get a Rise Out of Aristotle

    Michael Gilleland, the Laudator Temporis Acti, in his part-time capacity as 'channel' of Aristotle, submits this delightful missive: Dear Dr. Vallicella: You wrote: "Society and its various coercive and noncoercive arrangements exist for the sake of the individual and not the other way around. Given that the individual is the locus of value and the reason…

  • Wonder: Theaetetus 155 d with Aristotelian and Heideggerian Glosses

    Plato puts the following words in the mouth of Socrates at Theaeteus 155 d (tr. Benjamin Jowett): "I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder." Aristotle echoes the…

  • Retortion and Non-Contradiction in Aristotle, Metaphysics, Gamma 3, 4

    Retortion is the philosophical procedure whereby one seeks to establish a thesis by uncovering a performative inconsistency in anyone who attempts to deny it. It is something like that benign form of ad hominem in which person A points out to person B that some proposition p that B maintains is inconsistent with some other…

  • A Protreptic Puzzler

    A curious passage from Aristotle's Protrepticus: . . . the fact that all men feel at ease in philosophy, wishing to dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of it by leaving behind all other concerns, is in itself weighty evidence that it is a painless pleasure to dedicate oneself wholeheartedly to philosophy. For no…

  • Is Bradley’s Regress Already in Aristotle?

    At Metaphysics Zeta (Book VII, Chapter 17, Bekker 1041b10-30), there is a clear anticipation of Bradley’s Regress and an interesting formulation of what may well count as the fundamental problem of metaphysics, the problem of unity. What follows is the W. D. Ross translation of the passage. It is a mess presumably because the underlying…