"This addition to the Clarendon Aristotle series comprises a new translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics Book [Theta], an introduction to the basic notions and problems around which the book is structured, and a detailed chapter-by-chapter critical commentary. Makin's aim throughout is to present Aristotle's text in as accessible a manner as possible, and to encourage and enable readers to engage critically with Aristotle's arguments. Metaphysics Book [Theta] is an extended discussion of the distinction between the actual and the potential, a distinction which is important both for Aristotle's own thought and for later philosophers. Aristotle starts by considering the relation between capacities and changes, and then expands his discussion to cover the notions of matter and substance, which are at the heart of his ontology. Among the topics covered in detail in the commentary are the distinctions between two-way and one-way capacities, and between rational and non-rational capacities; arguments against reductive views of possibility and impossibility; Aristotle's treatment of capacity identity and his account of the exercise of capacities; Aristotle's answer to the question 'what is it to be potentially such and such?'; his defence of the idea that actuality is prior in various ways to potentiality; and his brief comments on the evaluation of potentialities and actualities, the role of the actual-potential distinction in geometrical knowledge, and his treatment of truth and falsity."--BOOK JACKET.
Martin Heidegger's reading of Aristotle was one of the pivotal influences in the development of his philosophy. First published in German in 1981 as volume 33 of Heidegger's Collected Works, this book translates a lecture course he presented at the University of Freiburg in 1931. Heidegger's careful translation and his probing commentary on the first three chapters of Book IX of Metaphysics show the close correlation between his phenomenological interpretation of the Greeks (especially of Aristotle) and his critique of metaphysics. Additionally, Heidegger's confrontation with Aristotle's Greek text makes a significant contribution to contemporary scholarship on Aristotle, particularly the understanding of potentiality in Aristotle's thought. Finally, the book exemplifies Heidegger's gift for teaching students how to read a philosophical text and how to question that text in a philosophical way.
Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both "actuality" and "activity" as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity (Theta 8) and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good (Theta 9).
Presents "Metaphysics," written by Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)in 350 B.C., translated by W.D. Ross, and published online as part of the Internet Classics Archive by Daniel C. Stevenson and Web Atomics.
Publisher: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra / Coimbra University Press
ISBN: 9789892600420
Category: Self (Philosophy)
Page: 404
View: 602
Sob o título Relations of the Self reúnem-se neste volume textos de grande qualidade, escritos para dar uma expressão mais exata às intervenções orais no Congresso Internacional ocorrido na Universidade de Coimbra em Março de 2009, promovido pelo grupo de investigação “A Individuação da Sociedade Moderna” da unidade de investigação em Filosofia da Universidade (L. I. F. – “Linguagem, Interpretação e Filosofia”) em colaboração com o projeto de investigação Bezüge des Selbst da Universidade de Potsdam. O propósito foi o de examinar o tema da auto-referência mediante um conjunto variado de pesquisas sectoriais que vão desde as análises histórico-filosóficas, aos estudos sistemáticos nas áreas de Estética, Antropologia, Filosofia da Mente, Filosofia Social e Política, integrando ainda investigações teóricas sobre o significado da auto-referência na Cibernética, nos mais recentes progressos sobre a Inteligência Artificial e sobre os Sistemas Sociais. O carácter multi-disciplinar do livro final é manifesto. Do ponto de vista formal, um dos aspetos atraentes da obra reside no equilíbrio entre as abordagens sectorial e sinótica, sobretudo porque raras são as circunstâncias em que nestes trabalhos o rigor analítico deu lugar a apressadas “visões de conjunto”. O leitor julgará por si. This volume brings together high-quality texts from the international conference that took place in the University of Coimbra in March 2009, organized by the research group “Individuation in Modern Society” of the Philosophy Research unit of that university (L. I. F. – “Language, Interpretation and Philosophy”) in collaboration with the research project Bezüge des Selbst at the University of Potsdam. The purpose was to examine the subject of self-reference using a varied cluster of sectorial studies ranging from historical-philosophical analyses to systematic studies in the areas of Aesthetics, Anthropology, Philosophy of the Mind, Social and Political Philosophy. It also included theoretical investigations into the significance of self-reference in Cybernetics, in the most recent progress about Artificial Intelligence and Social Systems. The final book is manifestly multidisciplinary in character. From the formal perspective, one of the most attractive aspects of the work lies in the balance between the sectorial and synoptic perspectives, particularly because of the rarity of the circumstances in which these works of analytical rigour gave way to hurried “overviews”. The reader will judge for him/herself.
Charlotte Witt continues her highly regarded exploration of Aristotle's metaphysics in a book devoted to the ontological distinction between potentiality and actuality. She focuses on Metaphysics book ix, which provides the most sustained discussion of this distinction. Witt rejects the conventional reading of this key text—that Aristotle differentiated between the two concepts solely to further the investigation of substance. Instead, in an original interpretation of his work, she argues that his development of the distinction between "being x potentially" and "being x actually" allowed Aristotle to develop an intrinsically hierarchical and normative vision of reality. For Witt, Aristotle's views about being shed light on his puzzling use of gender language in his descriptions of reality. This language has become an important issue for feminist scholars who have noted that in Aristotle's metaphysics of substance form is sometimes associated with the male, and matter with the female. Witt's interpretation that Aristotelian reality is intrinsically hierarchical and normative, but not intrinsically gendered, offers a new, important understanding of a controversial aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics.