Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Texts and Ideas
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Alexander and the Aristotelian formula of the principle of excluded middle in Metaphysics Γ 7
Get PDFAlexander of Aphrodisias’s comment to the arguments on the principle of excluded middle, held by Aristotle in Metaphysics Γ 7-8, seems to interpret that text in a specific perspective that, considering the subsequent researches carried out in different areas, is a predominantly logical and philosophical. This perspective emerges from the particular importance that the exegete reserves to the concepts of true and false with respect to the principle’s formula (For neither can there be anything intermediate in a contradiction, but of one thing we must either affirm or deny one thing, whatever it is 1011 b 23-24) and its first demonstration, but generally also to the axioms and the concept of contradiction. It can, moreover, be traced back to Alexander the attribution to the principle of a meaning closely related to those concepts.The reason for the Alexander’s interpretative choice could be found in its own conception of first philosophy as a demonstrative science, which seems to find out a consistent criterion for truth in the principle, establishing so the existence of something true and how to find it. However, such a requirement would be purely Alexandrian, because in Aristotle, as it can be demonstrated by the texts, the true is nothing more that the speech which describes the reality in a consistent way. In fact, it expresses a relationship between terms, and this relationship may be said to subsist, in the case of the affirmative statement, or does not subsist, in the case of denial
Verschenkte Jahre. Noch einmal zu den Leitstungen, Problemen und Mängeln der Kant's Akademie-Ausgabe
Get PDFThe Individual Limit of Natural Substances. A Comparison Between Aristotle and Galileo on the Strength of Materials
No full textThe Aristotelian text known with the title of Quaestiones mechanicae has greatly and explicitly influenced Galileo’s Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638). In particular, one of 35 questions posed and solved by the author of the Quaestiones mechanicae, is the problem known under the title “Problem of the breaking strength of materials” (Problem XVI). Regarding this problem, the notion of ‘Individual Limit’, which appears in this paper’s title, is central. This problem is discussed and solved by Galileo in a manner very different from that which, at the time of its formulation, was treated by Aristotle. The author of this article has analyzed the two treatments, comparing the proposed solutions, also in the light of scientific and philosophical positions of the two philosophers: Aristotle and Galileo. In particular, in the context of the following analysis, the author was analyzed first of all the exposition of the problem put forth by Galileo, and then he looked at the solution he proposed. After this, Galileo’s proposal was compared to the one made by Aristotle and, finally, several works by the Stagirite contained in the Corpus Aristotelicum were examined in order to find more precise information on this topic, and to find any affirmations made by Aristotle which may not have been considered before
Una preghiera per l'avvenire: la divinazione in sogno di Democrito
Get PDFThis paper proposes an interpretation of the Democritean prayer. My central proposal is that its role in ancient atomism was to seek divine visitations during sleep, thus allowing dreams to forecast unlucky or evil events, which remain inaccessible to the rational capacities of waking. In support of this proposal, I will develop three points about the gods in whom Democritus believed: 1) they were seen as real living beings (not as giant and indestructible films), 2) they were omniscient, 3) they expressed love for the wise men who struggled to defend justice, and to expand its sway throughout the polis. The central evidence for this interpretation is to be found in the scientific interpretation of Penelope's dream in Homer's Odyssey; it is here that the philosopher could have acquired his doctrine of divination during sleep
Aristotle's Metaphysics Book K in Paul Natorp's Neokantian Perspective
Get PDFIn the modern age, the particular fact that qualifies book K of Aristotle’s Metaphysics as the only text in which the object of the science of being qua being is identified with the object of theology made the scholars to doubt its authenticity. The most important stance in this regard is that of P. Natorp, who, in the famous essay of 1888 Über Aristoteles’ Metaphysics 1-8 K, 1065 a 26, recovering and studying in the light of the Neokantian philosophical perspective some observations of the leading scholars of Aristotle, such as V. Rose, L. Spengel, F. Überweg and W. Christ, tried to demonstrate its inauthenticity. For Natorp, since the ὂν ἁνλῶς or ᾗ ὄν and the ὄν τι καὶ γένος τι are opposite entities, and since the one excludes the other, a science dealing with being in general is superior to all those sciences treating a particular field of being and cannot be identified with any of them, not even with the most important one. As a matter of fact, Aristotle genuine conception about the structure and meaning of metaphysics is that the πρώτη φιλοσοφία must also deal with the unmovable and immaterial being, but not only with it. On the contrary, this reading should be considered as the result of the interpolations made in the text by one of the compilers of the Metaphysics. Natorp observes that the most significant among these interpolations concerns the whole book K, which, according to the scholar, should lead to expunge the work of Aristotle (cf. P. Natorp, “Thema und der Disposition aristotelischen Metaphysik”, Philosophical Monatshefte, 24, 1888, pp. 37-65, 540-574)
La felicità aristotelica tra la morte e la sorte: note di commento ad Aristotele Etica Nicomachea I 11
Get PDFThe following essay focuses on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I 11; this paper’s aim is to provide a running commentary of this chapter, in which Aristotle deals with important subjects of his ethics, in particular: (1) the problematic relation between happiness, fortune, external goods, and the death; (2) the matter of the possibility (generally held by common and traditional beliefs) of a sort of “communication” between living being’s successes or misfortunes and dead person’s joy or afflictionIl contributo che segue si incentra su Aristotele Etica Nicomachea I 11; lo scopo di questo articolo è fornire un commentario continuo di tale capitolo in cui Aristotele si occupa di temi importanti della sua etica, in particolare: (1) la relazione problematica tra la felicità, la fortuna, i beni esterni e la morte; (2) la questione della possibilità (assunta generalmente dalle credenze comuni e tradizionali) di una sorta di “comunicazione” tra i successi e le sventure di un essere vivente e la gioia o l’afflizione di un defunt
The Concept of Space in Hegel:The Early Jena Years
Get PDFThe last two decades of the Twentieth Century marked an ever-growing interest in philosophy of nature within the Hegel-Forschung. The essay outlines a renewed appraisal of the systematic form, which affords a better reckoning of the anti-mechanistic quality of Hegel’s philosophy of nature. This concerns, primarily, the progressive movement from externality to internality, then from the objectivity of nature to the subjectivity of the spirit, and hence the transition from mechanism to life as the most direct expression of the idea. It is from within the framework of such a general speculative perspective that we must consider the concept of space, and engage with Hegel’s 1801 work, Dissertatio de orbitis planetarum. The focus will then shift to how Hegel’s system was first traced out in Jena between 1803-1805, before the break with Schelling, and the “phenomenological crisis of the system”. The climax of this recognition may be identified in Hegel’s exposition of 1804-1805 in which he validates the theory of ideality – or abstractness – of space and time as separate forms, i.e. considered per se. The reality of space-time becomes the being of time in space and the being of space in time, and the “real union” of the two is “the real infinity of the ether”, of absolute matter, which he terms motion
