Aristotle: Physics

Within the general discussion of space and its dimensionality, Aristotle's position is of the greatest relevance, as one will have the opportunity to argue and discuss in this article.

Even though Aristotle speaks often about language, his remarks do not fall within the province of any given discipline, let alone belong to the same subject matter or amount to a πραγματεία of their own. Rather, they are somewhat scattered across the Aristotelian corpus and are to be gleaned from a vast array of texts, including ethical and political writings (where language plays a remarkable role in shaping human sociability), treatises on natural history (where Aristotle outlines the physiology of phonation (...) in some animals such as birds and human beings), books on the soul (where Aristotle describes how language is intertwined with perception, imagination and thought) and works on dialectics, poetics and rhetoric (where linguistic expression is described as a powerful means of both persuasion and deception). Accordingly, «Le langage. Lectures d’Aristote» elects to study Aristotle’s understanding of language and its workings by asking relevant Aristotelian texts only those questions these texts answer – either by themselves or in conjunction with one another. -/- Quelque nombreuses et quelque influentes qu'elles soient par ailleurs, les vues d'Aristote sur le langage se caractérisent à la fois par leur hétérogénéité et par leur marginalité. Sans faire nulle part du langage et de la signification l'objet d'une investigation autonome et méthodique, Aristote multiplie les remarques et les digressions à leur sujet, que ce soit dans ses écrits d'éthique et de politique ou dans ses traités d'histoire et de philosophie naturelle, ou encore dans ses manuels de dialectique, de poétique et de rhétorique. Face à l'abondance de ces matériaux et aux difficultés qu'ils présentent du fait de s'offrir au lecteur en ordre quelque peu dispersé, «Le langage. Lectures d'Aristote» fait le choix d'indexer l'étude du langage chez Aristote sur des passages précis du corpus en ne posant aux textes aristotéliciens d'intérêt linguistique que les questions auxquelles ces mêmes textes - tantôt pris isolément, tantôt mis en relation les uns avec les autres - apportent une réponse. (shrink)

On propose ici de clarifier ce qu’Anaximandre entendait par « le divin » et ce qu’il appelait des « dieux ». À partir d’une réévaluation des sources anciennes, on soutient que cette enquête peut aider à comprendre son modèle cosmologique et le problème des cataclysmes dans son système. Trois hypothèses sont avancées à cette fin : [i] que dans Physique, III, 4, 203b3 15, le syntagme τὸ ἄπειρον renvoie à une notion concrète de substrat infini ; [ii] que dans ce (...) même passage, Aristote n’a probablement pas attribué aux philosophes de la nature – y compris Anaximandre – la thèse selon laquelle τὸ ἄπειρον est divin, mais plutôt la thèse selon laquelle ils comprennent le divin comme étant immortel et impérissable ; [iii] qu’Anaximandre, en supposant que « les astres célestes » sont des dieux, admettrait qu’ils naissent mais ne se détruisent pas – ce qui réfuterait l’idée d’un cataclysme universel chez lui. En conclusion, l’étude discute en quoi consisterait la gouvernance cosmique de τὸ ἄπειρον dans un univers divisé en trois niveaux et propose que cette gouvernance viendrait du fait que τὸ ἄπειρον possède un mouvement éternel. (shrink)

This contribution offers an interpretation of the last half of chapter 1 of book 5 of Aristotle’s Physics in the form of a commentary. Among other things, it attempts an explanation of why Aristotle calls the termini of changes ‘something underlying’ (ὑποκείμενον) and ‘something not underlying’ (μὴ ὑποκείμενον). It also provides an analysis of Aristotle’s argument for the claim that what is not simpliciter does not change in the light of this interpretation.

The concept of kosmos did not play the leading role in Aristotle’s physics that it did in Pythagorean, Atomistic, Platonic, or Stoic physics. Although Aristotle greatly influenced the history of cosmology, he does not himself recognize a science of cosmology, a science taking the kosmos itself as the object of study with its own phenomena to be explained and its own principles that explain them. The term kosmos played an important role in two aspects of his predecessor’s accounts that Aristotle (...) rejected: first, cosmogeny and kosmopoiia, generation or creation of the kosmos; second, diakosmêsis, arranging of a plurality of kosmoi. Aristotle was extremely critical of accounts involving kosmopoiia and diakosmêsis and he developed general dialectical strategies against them. In emphatically distinguishing his view from all his predecessors (including Plato), he uses the terms ho ouranos (the heaven), to holon (the whole), and to pan (the totality) in preference to ho kosmos (the kosmos or world). There is usually no harm in speaking loosely of ‘Aristotle’s cosmology’ when referring to his concept of the order of nature and the ouranos. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s theoretical philosophy offers something very different from those of his predecessors for whom kosmos was a keyword. (shrink)

The essay studies Aristotle’s critique of Parmenides in the light of the Heideggerian account of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics as an approach to being in terms of beings. Aristotle’s critique focuses on the presuppositions of the Parmenidean thesis of the unity of being. It is argued that a close study of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s own critique reveals an important difference between the Aristotelian metaphysical framework and the Parmenidean “protometaphysical” approach. The Parmenides fragments indicate being as such in the sense of the (...) pure, undifferentiated “is there” —as the intelligible accessibility of meaningful reality to thinking, prior to its articulation into determinate beings. For Aristotle, by contrast, “being itself” has no other plausible meaning than “being-something-determinate as such”, which itself remains equivocal. In this sense, Aristotle can indeed be said to conceive being in terms of beings, as the being-ness of determinate beings. (shrink)

The main aim of my paper is to analyse Aristotle’s theory of language in the context of his Physics I.1 and via an analysis and an interpretation of this part of his Physics I try to show that (i) the study of human language (logos) significantly falls within the competence of Aristotle’s physics (i.e. natural philosophy), (ii) we can find the results of such (physical) inquiry in Aristotle’s zoological writings, stated in the forms of the first principles, causes and elements (...) of the human speech (logos) and (iii) the analogies (Phys. 184b13-14) made by Aristotle at the very end of the first chapter make better sense if we consider them in the broader context in which Aristotle recognizes language as a complex natural phenomenon we are born into and which has to be not only biologically, but also socially developed through our lives. Hence, I aim towards a more naturalistic reading of Aristotle’s views on language. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the relationship between the now, motion, and number in Aristotle to clarify the nature of the now, and, thereby, the relationship between motion and time. Although it is clear that for Aristotle motion, and, more generally, change, are prior to time, the nature of this priority is not clear. But if time is the number of motion, then the priority of motion can be grasped by examining his theory of number. This paper aims to show that, just (...) as numbers are generated by the soul, time is not presupposed by motion, but emerges through the soul’s articulation of motion. Time is co-constituted by the soul and motion. The now is the key to understanding both the contribution of motion and soul to the being of time. The now is part of the soul’s articulation of motion, and sets the stage for an act that distinguishes a unit from its underlying motion. The now, then, sets up an abstraction by which the soul generates the temporal number from motion. Reconstructing this account of abstraction allows us to formulate more strongly Aristotle’s claim to the ontological dependence of time on motion. The paper then gives a systematic overview of the relationships between the now and number in order to address the question of whether the now might be extended. It closes with an examination of the possibility that motion depends on time, and how universal time is possible. (shrink)

The belief that Aristotle opposes potency (dunamis) to actuality (energeia or entelecheia) has gone untested. This essay defines and distinguishes forms of the Opposition Hypothesis—the Actualization, Privation, and Modal—examining the texts and arguments adduced to support them. Using Aristotle’s own account of opposition, the texts appear instead to show that potency and actuality are compatible, while arguments for their opposition produce intractable problems. Notably, Aristotle’s refutation of the Megarian Identity Hypothesis applies with equal or greater force to the Opposition Hypothesis. (...) For Aristotle, then, potency and actuality are compatible. (shrink)

Of Aristotle’s core terms, potency (dunamis) and actuality (energeia) are among the most important. But when we attempt to understand what they mean, we face the following problem: their primary meaning is movement, as a source (dunamis) or as movement itself (energeia). We therefore have to understand movement in order to understand them. But the structure of movement is itself articulated using these terms: it is the activity of a potential being, as potent. This paper examines this hermeneutic circle, and (...) works out a strategy for reading Aristotle based on his conception of our epistemological predicament. This hermeneutic approach helps us gain access to the phenomena of movement and its sources (potency, and energeia). The paper closes with a review of the conceptual resources we deploy to think about movement: homogeneity, space and time, impulse, relativity, the blend of sameness and difference, and being and non-being. Showing that Aristotle uses none of these clears the landscape for a fresh inquiry into his account of movement. (shrink)

O presente trabalho visa demonstrar como a relação entre corpo e alma são indispensáveis para o viver. Para tanto, considera a tese de que o ser animado é uma substância composta de matéria e forma, que também pode ser analisada sob a perspectiva de potência e ato. Neste sentido, o trabalho inicia com a compreensão sobre o que é uma substância, qual tipo de substância é o ser vivo para, em seguida, mediante as definições de alma presentes no livro Β (...) do De Anima, perceber como se dá a relação entre corpo e alma e porque tal relação é necessária ao viver. (shrink)

Aristotle offers several arguments in Physics viii.8 for his thesis that, when something moves back and forth, it does not undergo a single motion. These arguments occur against the background of a sophisticated theory, expounded in Physics v—vi, of the basic structure of motions and of other continuous entities such as times and magnitudes. The arguments in Physics viii.8 stand in a complex relation to that theory. On the one hand, Aristotle evidently relies on the theory in a number of (...) crucial steps. Yet in other steps he seems to contradict or misapply the theory. This situation offers the occasion to examine Aristotle’s views about some fundamentals in the metaphysics of motion, while also raising questions about the unity of the text which has come down to us as the Physics. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Aristotle's notion of potentiality as it applies to the beginning of life. Aristotle’s notion of natural kinēsis implies that we should not treat the entity at the beginning of embryonic development as human, or indeed as the same as the one that is born. This leads us to ask: When does the embryo turn into a human? Aristotle’s own answer to this question is very harsh. Bracketing the views that lead to this harsh answer, his (...) theory of kinēsis still gives us reason for searching for a replacement answer. Aristotle’s own work unfortunately gives us no help in finding this answer. (shrink)

This paper presents Aristotle’s method of understanding the first principles of natural things in the Physics I.1 and analyzes the three stages of which this method consists. In the Physics I.1, Aristotle suggests that the natural proper route which one has to follow in order to find out the first principles of natural things is to proceed from what is clearer and more knowable to us to what is more knowable and clear by nature. In the Physics I.1, the terms (...) καθόλου and καθ΄ ἕκαστα are not used in their usual meaning. This paper examines the Physics I.1 in comparison with the Posterior Analytics II. 19 in order to elucidate the meaning of καθόλου in the first chapter of Aristotle’s Physics. Furthermore, it reaches the conclusion that the structure of the natural world to which we belong determines the structure and the form of our knowledge. On the one hand, natural things are composite and, on the other hand, perception is involved in the initial grasping of natural things as composites. Thus, since perceptual knowledge is more accessible to us than any other kind of knowledge it is natural to reach knowledge of simple things, i.e., of the principles, starting our inquiry with the composites. (shrink)

I discuss some of Aristotle’s scattered remarks from which one can construct his conception of matter. Aristotle seems to oscillate between two conceptions: one in which matter is the principle of becoming, another in which matter is a constituent element with no contribution for processes of becoming. Sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a thing independent in itself, and the correlated form is a feature that does not contribute to the matter’s essence, nor is a necessary condition for its existence. But (...) sometimes Aristotle takes matter as a constituent element the existence of which depends on the whole thing it is the matter of. These different approaches to matter seem to suggest an inconsistent theory of matter. However, I argue that, quite to the contrary, Aristotle has a consistent theory about matter. One of my main points is to distinguish contexts in which Aristotle is indeed talking about matter in general from contexts in which he uses the term “matter” to refer to a given thing that was previously taken as matter and to talk about that thing not qua matter, but qua the thing it is. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

Translated into Danish by Henrik Jøker Bjerre.

This appears in a supplementary issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, entitled "Ancient Approaches to Plato's Timaeus.".

Two things are often said about Aristotle's treatment of time in the Physics. First, that Aristotle's considered view of time is intrinsically tied to a language of temporal passage heavily dependent on the A-series. As such Aristotle's understanding of time is plagued with the perplexities that the A-series generates. Second, that the series of puzzles that Aristotle treats in IV.10, leading to the conclusion that time is non-existent, are left unanswered by Aristotle. Instead after presenting the puzzles having to do (...) with whether time is, Aristotle cannot move fast enough to his treatment of what time is, leaving the puzzles unresolved. This paper looks at these two issues together. The thesis is that the puzzles about the existence of time discussed by Aristotle at IV.10 are generated by a particularly naive version of the A-theory. Further, although Aristotle's answer to what time is incorporates elements of an A-theory of time, it manages to avoid just those particular puzzles discussed in IV.10 leading to the conclusion of time's non-existence. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is something wrong with the way we treat nature, because it is apparently even harmful to ourselves. Therefore it could be good for us, if this dealing with nature would be corrected by an alternative conception of nature. Since our own thinking is influenced by Aristotle in some deep and essential aspects - but in a very mediated form - and nevertheless originates from another world, it has at the same time a closeness (...) and a distance to our own thinking. This is favorable for a comparison. Reflection on this thinking about nature could therefore be particularly helpful. -/- The attempt to understand Aristotle's theory of nature might also be helpful because, as will be shown, the physis of which Aristotle speaks is not at all the nature of modern natural science, as is usually assumed. The basic premise of this assumption, that there is only one nature and only one correct and successful handling of it, namely the modern natural scientific one, has to be questioned, even if it rightly exists in everyday life. -/- Second, not only the Aristotelian concept of nature differs from ours, but also that of theory. We use the term theory today, often thinking that we are following Aristotle; some might not even make a distinction between a "scientific theory" and a "theory of nature." A correction of this view might be helpful. Aristotle's theory neither wants to assert anything, on the contrary, it is the reflection on that which is first in nature with the method of topical attitude, it is an example of "unassertive thinking." Aristotle's theory of nature is not a model to find out something or to produce something, it is the ideal of a knowledge for its own sake. (shrink)