Paul Vincent Spade

Let me begin then by introducing you to a distinction between what I will call a broadly “Platonic”-style and a broadly “Aristotelian”-style metaphysics. The guiding thread will be the notion of the essential and non-essential (accidental) features of a thing. Perhaps you will find what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” view unfamiliar and even foreign, because there is a kind of metaphysical “common denominator” in some philosophical circles today, left-over perhaps from the days of “analytic” philosophical insularity, but in any case quite unlike what I am here calling an “Aristotelian” metaphysics. Instead it is much closer to what I regard as a Platonic approach.