Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics

313 Pages·2014·2.16 MB·English

Philosophers in Depth
Series Editors: Stephen Boulter and Constantine Sandis
Philosophers in Depth is a series of themed edited collections focusing on
particular aspects of the thought of major figures from the history of philos-
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a vast collection of critical essays covering the history of philosophy, exploring
issues that are central to the ideas of individual philosophers. This project was
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Research at Oxford Brookes University, for which we are very grateful.
Constantine Sandis and Stephen Boulter
Oxford
Titles include:
Alison Denham (editor)
PLATO ON ART AND BEAUTY
Edward Feser (editor)
ARISTOTLE ON METHOD AND METAPHYSICS
Philip Goff (editor)
SPINOZA ON MONISM
Leonard Kahn (editor)
MILL ON JUSTICE
Arto Laitinen and Constantine Sandis (editors)
HEGEL ON ACTION
Katherine Morris (editor)
SARTRE ON THE BODY
Charles R. Pigden (editor)
HUME ON MOTIvATION AND vIRTUE
Sabine Roeser
REID ON ETHICS
Henrik Rydenfelt and Sami Pihlström (editors)
WILLIAM JAMES ON RELIGION
Daniel Whiting (editor)
THE LATER WITTGENSTEIN ON LANGUAGE
Forthcoming titles:
Alix Cohen (editor)
KANT ON EMOTION AND vALUE
Pierre Destree (editor)
ARISTOTLE ON AESTHETICS
David Dolby (editor)
RYLE ON MIND AND LANGUAGE
Brian Garvey (editor)
J. L. AUSTIN ON LANGUAGE
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Aristotle on Method and

Metaphysics
Edited by
Edward Feser
Pasadena City College, California, USA
Selection and editorial matter © Edward Feser 2013
Chapters © Individual authors 2013
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Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Notes on Contributors viii
1 Introduction: An Aristotelian Revival? 1
Edward Feser
2 The Phainomenological Method in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics 7
Christopher Shields
3 The Aporetic Method and the Defense of
Immodest Metaphysics 28
Stephen Boulter
4 Metaphysics as the First Philosophy 49
Tuomas E. Tahko
5 Two Doctrines of Categories in Aristotle:
Topics, Categories, and Metaphysics 68
Robert Bolton
6 Grounding, Analogy, and Aristotle’s Critique of
Plato’s Idea of the Good 102
Allan Silverman
7. Essence, Modality, and the Master Craftsman 121
Stephen Williams and David Charles
8 Being, Unity, and Identity in the Fregean and
Aristotelian Traditions 146
Gyula Klima
9 Substance, Independence, and Unity 169
Kathrin Koslicki
10 Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Brief
Exposition and Defense 196
E. J. Lowe
v
vi Contents
11 Synthetic Life and the Bruteness of
Immanent Causation 206
David S. Oderberg
12 Motion in Aristotle, Newton, and Einstein 236
Edward Feser
13 Incomposite Being 259
Lloyd P. Gerson
14 Aristotle’s Divine Cause 277
Fred D. Miller, Jr.
Index 299
Acknowledgments

I want to thank Stephen Boulter for commissioning this volume and
Constantine Sandis and Melanie Blair for helping to bring it to frui-
tion. I thank the contributors to the volume for delivering such a fine
collection of essays. And I thank my beloved wife Rachel and our dear
children Benedict, Gemma, Kilian, Helena, John, and Gwendolyn for
tolerating the many hours I spend in my study working on projects like
this one.
vii
Notes on Contributors

Robert Bolton is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is the
author of Science, Dialectique et Ethique chez Aristote (2010), and author or
editor of numerous books and articles on Aristotle’s methodology, epis-
temology, and psychology, and on other aspects of ancient philosophy.
He is a former Rhodes Scholar and research fellow of the Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.
Stephen Boulter is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes
University and the author of The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy
(2007). His research focuses primarily on topics in metaphilosophy,
methodology, and metaphysics, with special interest in biology and
the Aristotelian tradition. His second monograph, Metaphysics from a
Biological Point of View, is due out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2013.
David Charles is a Research Professor of Philosophy at Oriel College,
Oxford, specializing in ancient philosophy. His two books, Aristotle’s
Philosophy of Action (1984) and Aristotle on Meaning and Essence (2000),
compare and contrast Aristotle’s views with those of recent writers on
these topics. He has edited a collection of essays by several authors enti-
tled Definition in Greek Philosophy (2011), bringing together studies of
Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and post-Aristotelian views on definition, meaning,
and essence. He has written a series of articles on aspects of Greek and
contemporary philosophy and is currently examining Aristotle’s distinc-
tive account of the psychological. He has been a visiting professor at
several universities in the US (Brown, Rutgers, UCLA) and at Tokyo
Metropolitan and venice Universities.
Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City
College in Pasadena, CA. He is the author of Aquinas (2009) and four
other books and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)
and has published numerous academic articles in philosophy of mind,
philosophy of religion, and moral and political philosophy.
Lloyd P. Gerson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
He has published widely on ancient philosophy, and his books include
Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato (2003), Aristotle and Other Platonists
(2005), and Ancient Epistemology (2009).
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Gyula Klima is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York.
He specializes in medieval and contemporary logic and metaphysics. His
books include Ars Artium: Essays in Philosophical Semantics, Medieval and
Modern (1988); John Buridan: Summulae de Dialectica, an annotated trans-
lation with a philosophical introduction (2001); Medieval Philosophy:
Essential Readings with Commentary (2007); and John Buridan (2009). He
is also the director of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics,
and the editor of its Proceedings, as well as editor of the series Medieval
Philosophy: Texts and Studies at Fordham University Press.
Kathrin Koslicki is originally from Munich, Germany. She received her
undergraduate degree in philosophy from SUNY Stony Brook in 1990
and her PhD in philosophy from MIT in 1995. Since then, she has held
various positions at universities throughout the US; since 2007, she has
been an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado-
Boulder. Her interests in philosophy lie mainly in metaphysics, the
philosophy of language, and ancient Greek philosophy, particularly
Aristotle. In her monograph, The Structure of Objects (2008), she defends
a structure-based, neo-Aristotelian theory of parts and wholes.
E. J. Lowe is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, UK, special-
izing in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind and action, the philos-
ophy of logic and language, and early modern philosophy. He is the
author of several books, including Kinds of Being (1989), The Possibility
of Metaphysics (1998), The Four-Category Ontology (2006), Personal Agency
(2008), and More Kinds of Being (2009).
Fred D. Miller, Jr. is Professor of Philosophy and executive director
of the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State
University and Research Professor at the Center for the Philosophy of
Freedom at the University of Arizona. He is author of Nature, Justice,
and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics (1995) and co-editor of A Companion to
Aristotle’s Politics (1995), Freedom, Reason, and the Polis: Essays in Ancient
Greek Political Philosophy (2007), A History of the Philosophy of Law from the
Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics (2007), and Reason and Analysis in Ancient
Greek Philosophy (2012). He is also Executive Editor of Social Philosophy
& Policy and Assistant Editor of The Philosopher’s Index. He is currently
preparing a translation of Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva Naturalia for
Oxford University Press.
David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Reading. His most recent book is Real Essentialism (2007), and he has
published widely in metaphysics among other areas.