Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy V: Aristotle's Ontology PDF
Preview Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy V: Aristotle's Ontology
Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy V Aristotle's Ontology Edited by Anthony Preus and John P Anton State University of New York Press Production by Ruth Fisher Marketing by Frail Keneston Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 1992 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address the State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246 Library of Cougress CataloginginPublication Data (Revised for vol. 5) Essays in ancient Greek Philosophy. Papers originally presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, 1953 Vol. 25 edited by John P. Anton and Anthony Preus. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. 12. [without special title]— v. 3. Plato—v. 4. Aristotle's ethics. 5. Aristotle's Ontology. I. Philosophy, Ancient—Congresses. I. Anton, John Peter, 192011. Kustas, George L. III. Preus, Anthony. IV. Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (U. S.) .B171.A56 180 6914648 ISBN 087395050X (v.1) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Page v CONTENTS Introduction vii Part I Being in Aristotle's Logic 1 On the Meaning of Kategoria in Aristotle's Categories 3 John R Anton The Taxonomical Interpretation of Aristotle's Categories: A Criticism 19 Donald Morrison The Plotinian Reduction of Aristotle's Categories 47 Christos C. Evangeliou Aristotle on Genus and Differentia 69 Herbert Granger On 'Essentially' ( ) in Aristotle 95 Alban Urbanas Meno's Paradox and De Re Knowledge in Aristotle's Theory of 111 Demonstration Michael Ferejohn Part II Methodology and the Metaphysics 131 Saving Aristotle from Nussbaum's Phainomena 133 William Wians The Origin of Aristotle's Metaphysical ' 151 Edward Halper Substratum, Subject, and Substance 177 Theodore Scaltsas Energeia in Aristotle's Metaphysics IX 211 Ronald Polansky Page vi Part III Being and Soul 227 Soul as Subject in Aristotle's De Anima 229 Christopher Shields Aristotle on the Mechanics of Thought 245 Michael V. Wedin The Anaxagorean Assumption in Aristotle's Account of Mind 273 John A. Driscoll Filling in Nature's Deficiencies 293 Robin Smith General Bibliography 313 List of Contributors 329 Index of Proper Names 333 Index of Concepts 337 Index of Classical Passages Cited 347 Page vii INTRODUCTION In preparing this volume for publication, we became more than ever aware that the study of Aristotle's logical and metaphysical theories is a philosophically privileged domain. The global controversies, the tensions between analytic and continental philosophy, the struggles between establishment and alternative philosophical positions all seem remote. When a philosopher turns to the interpretation of Aristotle, other philosophical controversies seem put aside. The interpretation of Aristotle's ontology is a kind of intellectual common ground for professional philosophers; nearly everyone who discusses Aristotle, or at least this part of Aristotle's work, shares a certain attitude toward the text, a good deal of common methodology, and common goals of philosophical interpretation. Although there is controversy, that communality of purpose is evident in this volume. If there is a sense in which Plato established philosophy as an intellectual enterprise, it also could be said that Aristotle began philosophy as a profession; at any rate, many professional philosophers continue to locate their intellectual activities in terms of an Aristotelian matrix. Many of Aristotle's logical and metaphysical theories have regained increased respect in recent years, even when the details of those theories have been subjected to critical examination. Even though nearly all who write on Aristotle seem to speak the same philosophical language, they do not always agree on the meaning of the text or on its consequences. A good example of a typical dispute between commentators on Aristotle begins the volume: John P. Anton and Donald Morrison both examine the meaning of the word in the Categories and arrive at contrasting positions, while both compare and contrast their positions with that presented by Michael Frede. 1 Christos Evangeliou sheds light on the controversy by an examination of the understanding which another ancient author, Plotinus, had of these issues. Alban Urbanas takes another, quite original, tack in approaching some of the same problems dealt with by Anton, Morrison, and Evangeliou. At the same time, Herbert Granger's article explains the context within which Urbanas's argument is set and helps to clarify aspects of the dispute concerning categories. Another set of articles which might be interpreted as taking somewhat contrasting positions are those by Michael Ferejohn, William Wians, and Robin Smith to the extent that they treat of the possible character of an Aristotelian epistemology. We note that Ferejohn's essay is the Page viii only one in the volume which deals in any very extensive way with a relationship between the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato. The second section opens with the most explicitly critical essay in the volume, an extended attack by William Wians on Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of Aristotle's conception of . Yet even in this essay the dispute concerns the meaning of the text; Wians and Nussbaum share similar commitments to the text and a methodology. 2 Edward Halper's essay serves as a general introduction to the study of the Metaphysics, since it is a discussion of the problems which shape a good deal of the argument of that work from book Beta onward. Ronald Polansky takes up the fundamental problem concerning . Together these essays explore some of the central concepts of Aristotle's metaphysical theory. Aristotle's theory of the soul is manysided; part of the theory has implications for moral psychology. We find that part of the theory best represented in the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, which were studied in volume 4 of this series. But the De Anima and most other works in the Corpus dealing with the soul are concerned primarily with ontological issues and foundational issues in epistemology. The third section, gathering essays dealing with the ontological aspects of Aristotle's theory of the soul, brings together issues in psychology and ontology. Christopher Shields's discussion of ontological questions relates directly to the essays in section 2, emphasizing soul as . Michael Wedin tackles a problem which has continued to baffle many interpreters: How, according to Aristotle, do we think? And building on an earlier essay by Wedin, John Driscoll turns our attention to the textual study of a part of that question, viz., how does the mind think itself, according to the De Anima? He sees Aristotle's answer as a development of prePlatonic theories of mind. Robin Smith brings together many of the strands of Aristotle's thought discussed in the volume in his examination of Aristotle's concept of nature. He both clarifies the relationships of the concept of nature to the ideas developed in the logical and metaphysical writings and shows how the soul can be seen as a "selfperfecting nature." That road leads directly to issues in moral psychology. The essays in this volume were selected from a much larger group of papers originally presented at meetings of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy. Speakers at those meetings are invited to speak on whatever topic in ancient philosophy they choose; it is an indication of the liveliness and timeliness of the discussion of Aristotle's ontology that so many leading scholars in the history of ancient thought have chosen to turn their Page ix attention to these questions. We are especially gratified that we have been able to include essays by several younger scholars, ensuring a continuity of the Aristotelian tradition. It is the hope of the editors that, by publishing together those essays, many of them not previously published, dealing directly with ontological issues in Aristotle, they may provide the scholar with a range of interpretations; at the same time, graduate students and advanced undergraduate students of Aristotle will have access to a volume which both introduces them to some of the liveliest current theories and shows the way to technical examinations of particular points in Aristotle's text. ANTHONY PREUS JOHN P. ANTON Notes 1. See Michael Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), chapters 2 and 3. 2. See Wians's last footnote and Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, chapter 8. Page 1 PART 1 BEING IN ARISTOTLE'S LOGIC Page 3 On the Meaning of Kategoria in Aristotle's Categories John P Anton I In a paper written in 1974 and subsequently published in 1975, 1 I argued that the Aristotelian texts, particularly that of the Categories, allow for a parallel yet distinct interpretation to the traditional and prevalent one that takes the categories to be terms, ultimate classes, types, and concepts.2 My position there was that the primary use of kategoria refers to wellformed statements made according to canons and, to be more precise, to fundamental types of predication conforming to rules sustained by the ways of beings. In trying to decide how Aristotle uses the term in the treatise that bears the same name, Categories,3 provision must be made for the fact that there is nothing in the text to justify the meanings that ancient commentators and also modern writers assigned to it and that found their way both into translations of Aristotle's works and into the corpus of established terminology.4 The present article is written in the hope that it will contribute in some small measure to understanding why certain distinctions in the treatise Categories should have prevented interpreters from assigning the traditional meaning of "genera of being" to the term category, hence giving it the meaning of "highest predicate" rather than "fundamental type of predication." Professor M. Frede published an important article in 1981,5 defending a similar reading of the term kategoria mainly by examining closely the textual evidence in the Topics; however, when he addressed the same problem in the case of the treatise Categories, the conclusions he drew led to a different stand from the one I present in this paper. He defended the view that the text of the Categories does not contain the elements needed to construct an explicit theory of categories in the form in which Aristotle presented in the Topics. Frede's argument as regards the Topics is convincing, and I find myself in complete agreement. However, his position contains a strong element that raises a certain difficulty about the thesis
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