La exposición y crítica de las doctrinas antiguas tiene un lugar importante en los escritos de Aristóteles. Sin embargo, ciertas dudas se han vuelto corrientes acerca de la confiabilidad de sus descripciones. Más aún, se ha sostenido que Aristóteles deforma la comprensión histórica a través de la introducción de conceptos y términos propios. En este libro se aborda el problema a través de un análisis de las críticas que Aristóteles dirige a la teoría platónica de las Ideas, que permite explicar (...) la constitución y desarrollo de importantes conceptos aristotélicos a partir de la confrontación dialéctica con las doctrinas de su maestro. En efecto, las dificultades genuinas que Aristóteles descubre en el platonismo constituyen el motor para gestar nuevos conceptos, que no son ajenos, sino que surgen como implicaciones del examen crítico. Así, la imposición de términos propios no debe interpretarse como distorsión, sino como el modo que Aristóteles adopta para exhibir su particular solución a los problemas que los filósofos anteriores dejaron sin solución. (shrink)

I shall argue that, according to Aristotle, the knowledge we may attain is profoundly qualified by our status as human knowers. Throughout the corpus, Aristotle maintains a separation of knowledge at the broadest level into two kinds, human and divine. The separation is not complete—human knowers may enjoy temporarily what god or the gods enjoy on a continuous basis; but the division expresses a fact about humanity's place in the cosmos, one that imposes strict conditions on what we may know, (...) with what degree of certainty, and in what areas. While passages bearing on human knowledge are familiar, looking at them collectively and in comparison with certain other well known Aristotelian doctrines may significantly affect how we understand the goals of his philosophy and why our hopes for reaching them must be limited. (shrink)

This article argues that philosophers tend to employ a particular method in constructing their theories and critiquing their opponents. To substantiate this claim, the article examines the work of Nietzsche and Locke, the Empiricists and Rationalists, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida, and Russell and Wittgenstein, showing how each relies on a method the article labels “revolution-through-return.” The method consists in identifying the authority behind your opponent's theory, then appealing to something “prior to” that authority, from which you then proceed to derive (...) your own theory. The article distinguishes between several senses of priority, argues that modern philosophers tend to rely on temporal priority, and discusses the questions in priority theory that need to be addressed in order evaluate and construct revolution-through-return arguments. (shrink)