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)

This article aims at elucidating the logic of Arist. SE 22, 178b36–179a10 and, in particular, of the sophism labelled "Third Man" discussed in it. I suggest that neither the sophistic Walking Man argument, proposed by ancient commentators, nor the Aristotelian Third Man of the , suggested by modern interpreters, can be identified with the fallacious argument Aristotle presents and solves in the passage. I propose an alternative reconstruction of the Third Man sophism and argue that an explanation of the lines (...) regarding the identity of Coriscus and Coriscus the musician (178b39–179a3) is indispensable for its correct understanding, since they hint at another sophism in some important aspects analogous. Finally, I show that two contradictions concerning spotted by scholars in the passage are only apparent and can be dissolved once the assumption that the anti-Platonic Third Man argument is at stake here is discarded, and once the passage is read in the light of its agonistic context. (shrink)

Antiphasis is a case of core-dependent homonymy, and has three significations in Aristotle's philosophy: antiphasis as an opposition between propositions ; antiphasis as the opposition between ‘subject’ and ‘not a subject’ in coming-to-be and perishing ; and antiphasis as the opposition between possession and privation . Argument based on the fifth type of priority described in Cat. 12 shows that, for Aristotle, the ontological significations are prior to the propositional.

In 2005, an Egyptian dialogue’s editio princeps was published, named by its editors the ‘Book of Thoth’. While prior research on the relation between this dialogue and the Corpus Hermeticum could not identify far reaching parallels, another relation has not been taken into account yet: the relation to Plato’s critique of writing in the Phaedrus. The present article argues that very likely the Book of Thoth forms a source of the Platonic text, to which Plato responds with a diametrically opposed (...) criticism. To underline the argument, literal and thematic parallels are pointed out in a first step. Then, secondly, the focus is put on the order of the two texts. Finally, a systematic comparison between the Platonic and the Egyptian understanding of scripture underscores the argument. Thematic parallels and literal correspondences are numerous and therefore suggest excluding a similarity by accident: In the Book of Thoth we grasp a concrete Egyptian source of Plato for the first time. (shrink)