Doing and Being confronts the problem of how to understand two central concepts of Aristotle's philosophy: energeia and dunamis. While these terms seem ambiguous between actuality/potentiality and activity/capacity, Aristotle did not intend them to be so. Through a careful and detailed reading of Metaphysics Theta, Beere argues that we can solve the problem by rejecting both "actuality" and "activity" as translations of energeia, and by working out an analogical conception of energeia. This approach enables Beere to discern a hitherto unnoticed (...) connection between Plato's Sophist and Aristotle's Metaphysics Theta, and to give satisfying interpretations of the major claims that Aristotle makes in Metaphysics Theta, the claim that energeia is prior in being to capacity and the claim that any eternal principle must be perfectly good. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of female nature has received mostly negative treatment, emphasising what he says females cannot do. Building on recent research, this book comprehensively revises such readings, setting out the complex and positive role played by the female in Aristotle's thought with a particular focus on the longest surviving treatise on reproduction in the ancient corpus, the Generation of Animals. It provides new interpretations of the nature of Aristotle's sexism, his theory of male and female interaction in generation, and his (...) account of inherited features. It also discusses a range of more general issues which can and should be re-examined in light of Aristotle's account of female animals: his methodology, hylomorphism, teleology and psychology. Aristotle on Female Animals will be valuable to all those interested in Aristotle's philosophy and the history of gender. (shrink)

The familiar Vendler-Kenny scheme of verb-types, viz., performances (further differentiated by Vedler into accomplishments and achievements), activities, and states, is too narrow in two important respects. First, it is narrow linguistically. It fails to take into account the phenomenon of verb aspect. The trichotomy is not one of verbs as lexical types but of predications. Second, the trichotomy is narrow ontologically. It is a specification in the context of human agency of the more fundamental, topic-neutral trichotomy, event-process-state.The central component in (...) this ontological trichotomy, event, can be sharply differentiated from its two flanking components by adapting a suggestion by Geoffrey N. Leech and others that the contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect in verbs corresponds to the count/mass distinction in the domain of nouns. With the help of two distinctions, of cardinal count adverbials versus frequency adverbials, and of occurrence versus associated occasion, two interrelated criteria for event predication are developed. Accordingly, Mary capsized the boat is an event predication because (a) it is equivalent to There was at least one capsizing of the boat by Mary, or (b) because it admits cardinal count adverbials, e.g., at least once, twice, three times. Ontologically speaking, events are defined as those occurrences that are inherently countable. (shrink)

This book is the first study of Aristotle s theory of generation and its revival by Averroes. For the first time, major treatises by Averroes on the physics, theory of elements, and biology of Aristotle are considered in their mutual relationship and in their connection to metaphysics. This study reveals issues at the foundation of Averroes philosophy and reinterprets them as fundamental milestones in the history of philosophy.".

The author attempts to chart Aristotle's philosophical progress, using the techniques of both philology and philosophical analysis. His aim is to see where Aristotle came from philosophically and what impelled him to develop his ideas in particular directions. The first chapter is an overall account of Aristotle's philosophical activities as his life progressed; the remaining sections discuss in detail the development of such key themes as the possibility of metaphysics, activity and potentiality, categories, mind, substance, God, human nature and happiness, (...) and the nature of society, including the proper role for women and the phenomenon of slavery. (shrink)

Aristotle’s most fundamental distinction between changes and other activities is not that ofMetaphysicsΘ.6, between end-exclusive and end-inclusive activities, but one implicit inPhysics3.1’s definition of change, between the activity of something incomplete and the activity of something complete. Notably, only the latter distinction can account for Aristotle’s view, inPhysics3.3, that ‘agency’—effecting change in something, e.g. teaching—does not qualify strictly as a change. This distinction informsDe Anima2.5 and imparts unity to Aristotle’s extended treatment of change inPhysics3.1-3.