I discuss Aristotle's treatment of essence and definition in Metaphysics VII.4. I argue that it is coherent and perfectly in accord with its broader context. His discussion in VII.4 offers, on the one hand, minimal criteria for what counts as definition and essence for whatever kind of object, but also, on the other hand, stronger criteria for a primary sort of definition and essence—and thereby it serves the interest of book VII in pointing to the explanatory power of the essence (...) of composite substances. (shrink)

I argue that Metaphysics H.6 is not an isolated chapter but the conclusion of an argument begun in H.3. This view will provide further and better arguments for the following view about long-standing interpretative debates: first, Aristotle provides a substantive account of the unity of the composite substance (although he also briefly addresses the unity of the form); second, neither Aristotle’s conception of matter nor his account of form changes between H.1–5 and H.6; and third, H does not rely on (...) and is not completed by book Θ in any significant way. (shrink)

This paper argues that the discussion in which Aristotle engages in Metaphysics ΖΗ has the same starting-point as natural science: the principles of changing substances. These inquiries are nonetheless distinct because natural science uses these principles in its detailed investigations into natural substances, whereas ΖΗ reflect on the principles themselves. ΖΗ are an integral part of Aristotle’s inquiry into the principles of all substances, changing and unchanging: they are not merely preliminary to an inquiry into the latter kind. They are (...) also an integral part of Aristotle’s ‘first philosophy’, alongside theology’s study of the nature and activity of unchanging substances. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the ways in which Alexander of Aphrodisias employs and develops so-called ‘common notions’ as reliable starting points of deductive arguments. He combines contemporary developments in the Stoic and Epicurean use of common notions with Aristotelian dialectic, and axioms. This more comprehensive concept of common notions can be extracted from Alexander’s commentary on Metaphysics A 1–2. Alexander puts Aristotle’s claim that ‘all human beings by nature desire to know’ in a larger deductive framework, and adds weight (...) to Aristotle’s use of the common understanding of the notion of ‘wisdom’. Finally I will indicate how these upgraded common notions are meant to play an important role in the general framework of metaphysics as a science. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper addresses a difficult passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics (V. 4, 1015a11-13) in which he identifies a metaphorical use of the term “nature” (phusis) to refer to the entities which he calls “substances” (ousiai). I claim that the passage at stake deploys the very notion of metaphor on the basis of an analogy (as defined in the Poetics and in the Rhetorics), which is grounded on a weak (and, sometimes, very weak) similarity between two relations (each involving two relata). The (...) sentences found in 1015a11-13 belong to those kind of metalinguistic sentences which we usually employ to shed some light on the metaphorical use of a term. The similarity Aristotle is presupposing is this: both nature and substance are, in their respective fields, some kind of principle that guarantees (besides other things) certain persistence conditions for what they are the principles of. And this weak similarity is enough for the term “nature” to refer metaphorically to substances. (shrink)