Edward Halper

This paper uses self-relation to reconstruct Hegel's reasoning in the Logic. In the sphere of "being," selfrelation is self-predication, and the predicate is the active, participial form of the category. Examining the first three and the last category in this sphere, I explain how Hegel argues that each category is itself engaged in the activity that it signifies. However, this self-predication adds new content to the category transforming it into a new category. Ultimately, this process leads to the collapse of "being" into "essence." Categories in this later sphere exhibit a different kind of self-relation : each contains its relation to itself as an activity that negates itself and then, negating this negation, returns to itself. Hegel's analysis at the beginning of "essence" is, I argue, parallel to Kant's "Transcendental Deduction," but relations among categories replace the transcendental ego. The significance of self-relation is that it (1) effects transitions to new categories by an internal mechanism, thereby (2) allowing the Logic to be a self-exposition of the categories that (3) avoids an external (Kantian) transcendental ground.

Pangle’s thesis is that Aristotle’s account of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9 addresses multiple audiences. For his ostensible audience, statesmen and other men of action, Aristotle paints an enticing picture of friendship that is based on moral virtue and issues in acts of benevolence. However, he embeds within this analysis subtle “tensions” designed to signal to thoughtful readers the limits of moral virtue and so to provoke them to pursue a philosophical life as well as to provide them the material for philosophical contemplation. Pangle thinks that this second group, potential philosophers, is Aristotle’s principal audience, even if unannounced.

This paper explores two issues: (1) how our thought about nature could reflect natural processes, and (2) how our thoughts about nature are connected with each other. It argues, first, that the standard ways philosophers try to make sense of the notion that thought is separate from nature cannot be made intelligible and, second, that the conceptual schemes used to grasp nature fall broadly into two groups each of which presupposes the other, even though the two are incompatible. Although these conclusions pose obstacles to the rationality of nature, the paper concludes by arguing for some significant degree of rationality of nature and explaining what this means for science. In brief, our ability to have an experience of nature and, especially, to connect disparate features of that experience with each other presupposes some intrinsic connections within nature itself, even if these are inaccessible to us.

In the first lines of Metaphysics 3, Aristotle argues that any progress in this discipline hinges on carefully working through the problems peculiar to it, the metaphysical aporiai; and he devotes all of book 3 to drawing up these problems. Despite this warning, book 3 and its doublet, book 11.1–2, have received relatively little attention. Many of the problems Aristotle sets out here are not addressed explicitly elsewhere in the Metaphysics, their discussion in book 3 is inconclusive, and most seem today of little intrinsic interest on their own. Book 3 has often been read as a merely historical record of that stage in his development when Aristotle personally struggled with Platonism, other philosophies, or his own earlier philosophy. Since there is no detailed and thorough study of book 3 in the recent literature, Madigan’s contribution is sorely needed and a worthy addition to the Clarendon Aristotle series. Like other volumes in the series, this one includes a literal translation followed by a line by line commentary that aims to explore different construals of Aristotle’s arguments and a glossary. Madigan also provides a few pages of textual notes that, unlike the rest of the book, presuppose some knowledge of Greek. A lengthy introduction does a good job of connecting book 3 to the rest of the Metaphysics. Book 11 receives relatively little attention—three pages in the introduction, six in the commentary. Madigan divides the text by aporia, he works through each argument that falls under each aporia, emphasizing in the process Aristotle’s frequent shifts in focus and assumption; Madigan tries to trace the origin of the various assumptions; and he concludes his discussion of each aporia by explaining where and how Aristotle solves it. Additionally, Madigan groups some of book 3’s aporiai and provides, either for the group or each nongrouped aporia, an introduction and an epilogue that lists the premises mentioned explicitly in each aporia along with a statement of whether or not Aristotle continued to accept each or how his view changed. Madigan counts 124 such premises in the whole of book 3. His conclusion is that “working through the aporiai of book 3 would heighten one’s awareness of the difficulties of the issues, but book 3 does not state in so many words what the ‘knots’ in our thinking are, much less how to untie them”.