Edward Halper

This comment begins by identifying four questions that German raises in his paper and sketching his answers. While agreeing with the thrust and much of the substance of German’s answers, I propose to refine each of them. German is right to say that subjectivity exists in Aristotle in much the same way as it does in Kant and Hegel because we human beings are ἐνέργειαι, but Aristotle’s primary examples of ἐνέργειαι are natural substances. Our human “subjectivity” manifests itself in our knowledge, in our ethical choices, and in some creative endeavors, but Aristotle maintains that knowledge is of natural substances (or of attributes that can be treated as natural substances) and that ethical choices as well as art are best when they imitate the ἐνέργειαι of natural substances. Hence, Aristotle’s subjectivity is intrinsically tied to and limited by nature, whereas Kant and Hegel extend subjectivity beyond nature by linking it to the will.

Jacob Klein raises two important questions about Aristotle’s account of number: (1) How does the intellect come to grasp a sensible as an intelligible unit? (2) What makes a collection of these intelligible units into one number? His answer to both questions is “abstraction.” First, we abstract (or, better, disregard) a thing’s sensible characteristics to grasp it as a noetic unit. Second, after counting like things, we again disregard their other characteristics and grasp the group as a noetic entity composed of “pure” units. As Klein explains them, Aristotle’s numbers are each “heaps” of counted units; in contrast, each of Plato’s numbers is one. This paper argues that Klein is right to understand a noetic unit existing in the sensible entity, but that his answer to the second question is not consonant with Aristotle’s insistence that Plato cannot account for the unity of a number, whereas he can. Slightly modifying Klein’s analysis, I show that Aristotle’s numbers are each one.

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship.

The articles in this volume are a selection of the papers presented during the Symposium Platonicum XIII held, 18-22 July 2022, at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA. The topic of the Symposium was Plato’s Sophist. Internationally known scholars, representing a variety of traditions and perspectives, have contributed works focused on many aspects of this work. The richness of the dialogue is addressed under the following headings: Philosophers and Sophists, The Method of Division, Eleatic Stranger and Noble Sophist, Dynamis and Being, Being and Non-Being, Kinds, Truth and Falsehood, Before and After the Sophist.

Twice in the Poetics, Aristotle contrasts poetry with history. Whatever its didactic value, the contrast has not seemed to readers of special philosophical interest. The aim of this paper is to show that this contrast is philosophically significant not just for our understanding of tragedy but also for the light it sheds on Aristotle’s overall methodology. I shall show how he uses the method sketched in the Topics to define tragedy and explain why the same method will not define history. In particular, tragedy admits of definition because its parts constitute a unity, and much of the Poetics aims to show how, despite being defined through six distinct parts, tragedy can be one. In contrast, history, though a proper preliminary to poetics and concerned also with human action, does not admit of scientific treatment because it contains no essential unities. Aristotle’s understanding of ‘science’ is used here to explain why any attempt to create a scientific history would turn history into poetry.

Joe Sachs has a refreshing and unusual view of Aristotle's Physics: he thinks that it is a physics. In contrast, most recent writers have seen the work as an exposition of the way nature is spoken and thought about, as metaphysics, or as an anticipation of modern physics. The reason the work is often misunderstood, Sachs maintains, is that translators render it into meaningless terms rooted in medieval Latin translations. Aristotle's own "philosophic vocabulary is... incapable of dogmatic use" because he takes his terms "from the simplest content of everyday speech, the kind of language that is richest in meaning and most firmly embedded in experience and imagination". Sachs thinks that replacing the technical vocabulary traditionally used to translate Aristotle's terms with ordinary speech will, by itself, insure that readers not only think about something but think about "the very things he intended". Thus, Greek terms usually rendered as "essence," "substance," and "actuality" become here, respectively, "what it is for something to be," "thinghood," and either "being-at-work" or "being-at-work-staying-itself". Also, instead of the traditional names for the categories, Sachs uses more literal translations like "of-this-kind" and "so much"; and to avoid the modern connotations of "matter," he translates the term hulê as "material." All this leads to a certain awkwardness that is intended to mirror the original: Sachs wants readers to pause over difficult concepts and, thus, to use the text to spur philosophical thinking. To the same end, he attempts to follow the syntax of the Greek text, and he thinks that he can capture Aristotle's meaning better by not always rendering a technical term the same way. The translation is supplemented by two- to four-page commentaries, one or two per book of the Physics, and also by an introduction describing his principles of translation as well as the content and perspective of the Physics, a note explaining the internal relations of some of Aristotle's terms, and a useful Glossary detailing usages of individual terms. Four "digressive" chapters, deemed too technical for "a first study," are placed in an appendix.

This paper addresses a central metaphysical issue that has not been recognized: what kind of entity is a syllogism? I argue that the syllogism cannot be merely a mental entity. Some counterpart must exist in nature. A careful examination of the Posterior Analytics’s distinction between the syllogism of the fact and the syllogism of the reasoned fact shows that we must set aside contemporary logic to appreciate Aristotle’s logic, enables us to understand the validity of the scientific syllogism through its content rather than its form, and explains the priority of the scientific syllogism over other valid syllogisms. The opening chapters of Posterior Analytics II help us to distinguish the entities that scientific syllogism must include as its terms; namely, a genus, an essential nature, and essential attributes of the genus. Often, the attributes are found in closely linked sequences. By exploring why there are such sequences and how they are linked, the paper argues that sequences of genus, nature, and sequential attributes are the basis in nature for the process of reasoning that we call the syllogism: we come to grasp the syllogism over time but the sequences to which it refers exist together in things. So understood, the syllogism, like knowledge of forms and truths, exists in us and in the world.

Heraclitus is famous for affirming contradictions, though most readers do not regard the content of his fragments as contradictory. Examining fragments 1 and 50, this article argues that Heraclitus aims to assert a special class of contradictions, the intrinsic conflict between the content of any universal metaphysical claim and the assertion or reception of that claim. Such contradictions undermine the possibility of metaphysics as a science that knows all things. Second, the article argues that Heraclitus himself embraces this sort of contradiction by making it, as it were, the content of his Logos. Third, the article examines three other solutions to the problem that have been advanced, mostly tacitly, by other philosophers. The article concludes with some steps towards a different way of preserving the possibility of metaphysics.

Since unity is always explained through something else, it is not primary; it is not the highest cause. Further, secondary unities are not understood through a primary "one"; rather, all ones are understood through being, actuality, etc. Hence, unlike being, unity is not a . In order that "one" function as it does in the Metaphysics it cannot be a . In the second part of the fourth chapter, I discuss Aristotle's definition of "one", and I argue that "one" is analogically defined. ;The final three chapters consist of a philosophical experiment. By emphasizing Aristotle's remarks about "one" and by tracing other issues to them, I construe Books , Z-H and I as treatments of unit and one-many problems. ;This analysis shows the subordinate status of "one" rather than its primacy. In each section a similar picture emerges. Aristotle's initial problematic involves unity, but the issue is ultimately resolved with the introduction of a peculiarly Aristotelian doctrine that does not involve unity. For example, the problem of how can be one is explained by identifying form as actuality. The motivation for this doctrine is precisely that it solves the problem. This analysis shows that Aristotle is using problems involving unity in order to argue for his own doctrines, and that unity is subsidiary to actuality, being, and because it is always explained through them. ;This thesis explains the role of unity in Aristotle's Metaphysics. In particular, it addresses the question of why metaphysics is not a treatment of "one". According to Aristotle, metaphysics is the science of highest causes, and the Platonists and some Presocratics regard "one" as the highest cause. Aristotle includes "one" among the subjects treated by metaphysics, but why does he instead regard being and as the proper subject matter of this science? ;The first chapter sets the stage for the analysis. It shows the importance of unity in Aristotle's criticism of his predecessors and in his , and the importance it should have had for his commentators. In addition, this chapter considers the various ways that things are said to be one

IT IS well-known that Plato and Aristotle disagree on the possibility of knowledge of nature. Plato maintains that knowledge, in contrast with belief, is never mistaken, that the objects of knowledge are always the same and never becoming, and that what we sense is always becoming. He concludes that knowledge is possible only of objects that are unchanging and separate from sensibles, i.e., the forms. Aristotle rejects this conclusion and recognizes knowledge of sensibles. Surprisingly, though, he accepts Plato's assumptions. He too maintains that knowledge is not sometimes true and sometimes false, but always true ; he distinguishes the sensibles from the unchanging eternal beings ; and he asserts that the objects of knowledge "always are or are for the most part", and occasionally he even claims that they cannot be otherwise. The problem is, how can Aristotle accept Plato's assumptions about the nature and objects of knowledge and still maintain that knowledge of nature is possible?

Maimonides’ claim, in Guide of the Perplexed I.68, that our intellect, like God’s, becomes one with the object it knows would seem to be at odds with his injunction to his readers to set their “thought to work on the first intelligible” and to “rejoice in what [it] apprehends”. The former passage supposes that we grasp individual essences by themselves, whereas the latter supposes that such essences are known only through their first cause. Since we cannot grasp the first cause, God, we cannot, apparently, grasp anything else or rejoice in it. After briefly sketching the solutions of Aristotle and Avicenna, this paper argues that Maimonides resolves these issues by distinguishing the metaphysical grasp of a single essence from the grasp of its relations - due to God’s will - with other essences and, more specifically, the metaphysical grasp of our own human essence from the grasp of ourselves through our physical and moral relations with the world. Insofar as we know ourselves by knowing everythi...

Drawing principally on the Symposium, this paper argues that humor in Plato’s dialogues serves two serious purposes. First, Plato uses puns and other devices to disarm the reader’s defenses and thereby allow her to consider philosophical ideas that she would otherwise dismiss. Second, insofar as human beings can only be understood through unchanging forms that we fail to attain, our lives are discontinuous and only partly intelligible. Since, though, the discontinuity between expectation and actual occurrence is the basis for humor, Plato can use humor to express who we are as human beings.