The present PhD dissertation aims to examine the relation between modality and change in Aristotle’s metaphysics. -/- On the one hand, Aristotle supports his modal realism (i.e., worldly objects have modal properties - potentialities and essences - that ground the ascriptions of possibility and necessity) by arguing that the rejection of modal realism makes change inexplicable, or, worse, banishes it from the realm of reality. On the other hand, the Stagirite analyses processes by means of modal notions (‘change is the (...) actuality of what is virtual insofar as it is virtual’). In other words: to grasp what change is, one has to resort to the modal idiom of potentialities, while the fact that there is change is indicative of the fact that nature is full of modal properties. -/- Aristotle’s modal and kinetic realism finds a negative in the figure of the Megaric Diodorus Kronus. The polemical situation of Greek philosophy has indeed the dialectical advantage of not opposing the Aristotelian position to a sui generis straw man. Both in its reduction of modal judgements to temporal quantifications and in its dissolution of the reality of the state-of-being-in-motion in favour of a cinematographic view of processes, the philosophical figure of reductionist antirealism embodied by Diodorus constitutes an alternative that takes the opposite view of Aristotle’s realism. -/- The present study is structured as a discussion between these two positions. In the face of Diodorus’ antirealist challenges, Aristotle articulates modal and kinetic considerations: the answers he gives to Diodorus’ puzzles thus provide valuable insight into his metaphysics. Moreover, the examination of Aristotle’s and Diodorus’ metaphysics, because of their insight and originality, will not fail to interest the philosopher concerned with the metaphysical foundations of modern physics, insofar as the entanglement between modalities and processes is nowadays at the core of mechanics (phase spaces, path integrals, etc.). (shrink)

Questioning Ricœur’s positioning of Aristotle and Augustine as the founders of the two mutually exclusive conceptions of time that dichotomize the Western tradition, this article suggests that what Ricœur describes as the aporetics of temporality is a product of the modern social time regime. Extracting Aristotle and Augustine’s conceptions of time from this modern problem reveals the Aristotelian so-called “naturalist” view of time as one that rather unifies humans and their world through symbolic mediation, while Augustine’s alleged “subjective” conception of (...) time is read rather as expressing the subordination of time to divine transcendence. (shrink)

This book investigates what change is, according to Aristotle, and how it affects his conception of being. Mark Sentesy argues that change leads Aristotle to develop first-order metaphysical concepts such as matter, potency, actuality, sources of being, and the teleology of emerging things. He shows that Aristotle’s distinctive ontological claim—that being is inescapably diverse in kind—is anchored in his argument for the existence of change. -/- Aristotle may be the only thinker to have given a noncircular definition of change. When (...) he gave this definition, arguing that change is real was a losing proposition. To show that it exists, he had to rework the way philosophers understood reality. His groundbreaking analysis of change has long been interpreted through a Platonist lens, however, in which being is conceived as unchanging. Offering a comprehensive reexamination of the relationship between change and being in Aristotle, Sentesy makes an important contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, ancient philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, and metaphysics. (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)

[ES] El presente artículo estudia el influjo de los tratados físicos de Aristóteles sobre la concepción tomista en torno al lugar del infinito en el cosmos creado. Se analiza la posición sostenida por el Aquinate respecto a cuatro aspectos fundamentales de la teoría aristotélica en torno al infinito: existencia de una sustancia infinita, existencia de un cuerpo infinito, existencia de un infinito en acto y la infinitud del tiempo. Asimismo se expone el empleo de la teoría aristotélica del movimiento y (...) los lugares naturales, por parte del Doctor angélico, para la refutación de toda posición que conciba el acto de creación como una mutación temporalmente sucesiva, así como su caracterización de la divinidad como sustancia perfecta cuya infinitud no puede ser comprendida bajo la noción de cantidad. [EN] This article studies the influence of Aristotle’s physical treatises on the Thomist conception on the place of infinity in the created cosmos. It analizes the position held by Aquinas on four fundamental aspects of the Aristotelian theory about infinity: existence of an infinite substance, existence of an infinite body, existence of an infinite in act and the infinity of time. Is also exposed the use of the Aristotelian theory of motion and natural places by the Angelic Doctor for the refutation of every position that presents the act of creation as a temporally successive mutation and his characterization of divinity as a perfect substance whose infinity can not be understood under the notion of quantity. (shrink)

Having in mind the concept of poiesis, as Paul Valéry uses it, time and movement are presented as concepts produced within the project of understanding the natural world. From the idea of philosophy as a way of constructing through concepts the intelligibility of phenomena, I will show the coherence between the construction of the concept of time and that of the concept of movement.

Aristotle begins his famous discussion of time in Book Δ of The Physics by asking whether time belongs to “the things that exist.” In this paper I argue that Aristotle’s apparently ambiguous answer to this question holds one of the keys to clarifying contemporary philosophy of time. First, I argue that the metaphysical and meta-philosophical presuppositions underlying most philosophy of time are deeply flawed. Second, that Aristotle provides us with a much more plausible alternative set of presuppositions about the nature (...) of time. The Aristotelian conception of time as part of the subject matter of physics or “the philosophy of nature” is particularly illuminating. Finally, I examine several issues about the nature and reality of time often raised in the context of contemporary physics and show how the Aristotelian perspective can resolve those puzzles. (shrink)

The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads.

In this paper we consider a puzzle concerning Hume's account of time and what he calls “steadfast unchanging objects”—that is, unchanging objects coexisting with temporal successions. On the one hand, Hume maintains that steadfast unchanging objects are temporally indivisible. On the other, he allows that such unchanging objects are capable of undergoing a determinate number of alterations in a given length of time, which seems to imply that they are at least potentially temporally divisible. After arguing that Donald Baxter's influential (...) interpretation of Hume's theory of time cannot resolve this tension, we propose that Hume offers a skeptical resolution of the difficulty. (shrink)

This paper has two main goals: first, it reconstructs Aristotle’s account of measurement in his Metaphysics and shows how it connects to modern notions of measurement. Second, it demonstrates that Aristotle’s notion of measurement only works for simple measures, but leads him into a dilemma once it comes to measuring complex phenomena, like mo-tion, where two or more different aspects, such as time and space, have to be taken into account. This is shown with the help of Aristotle’s reaction to (...) one of the problems Zeno’s dichotomy paradox raises: Aristotle implicitly employs a complex measure of motion when solving this problem, while he explicitly characterizes the measure of motion as a simple measure in his Physics. (shrink)

_The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads._.