Mary-Louise Gill

De Anima II,4 opens Aristotle’s investigation of the various psychic faculties with the basic capacity shared by plants and animals alike: nutritive soul. He announces a three-step approach to be extended from nutritive soul to perceptive soul and intellect: to define a psychic faculty, first examine the functions it enables, and to understand the functions, examine the correlative objects − in the case of nutrition, food. This paper examines how the methodological prescriptions apply to nutritive soul and, focusing on the function of organic selfmaintenance, argues that although the investigation of nutritive soul fits the stated program − food, self-maintenance, nutritive capacity − the order of investigation is the reverse of the order of explanation: the faculty is causally prior to the activity it enables, and the activity is prior to the correlative object, which is merely instrumental to that activity and to the psychic capacity. Moreover, the faculty is causally prior to its functions in three ways, as formal, final, and efficient cause. The paper does not speculate as to how the method extends to other psychic functions, but its analysis raises a question: Will Aristotle’s treatment of the higher faculties fit the prescribed method, and if so how?

This book explores a fundamental tension in Aristotle's metaphysics: how can an entity such as a living organisma composite generated through the imposition of form on preexisting matterhave the conceptual unity that Aristotle demands of primary substances? Mary Louise Gill bases her treatment of the problem of unity, and of Aristotle's solution, on a fresh interpretation of the relation between matter and form. Challenging the traditional understanding of Aristotelian matter, she argues that material substances are subverted by matter and maintained by form that controls the matter to serve a positive end. The unity of material substances thus involves a dynamic relation between resistant materials and directive ends. Aristotle on Substance offers both a general account of matter, form, and substantial unity and a specific assessment of particular Aristotelian arguments. At every point, Gill engages Aristotle on his own philosophical ground through the detailed analysis of central, and often controversial, texts from the Metaphysics, Physics, On Generation and Corruption, De Anima, De Caelo, and the biological works. The result is a coherent, firmly grounded rethinking of Aristotle's central metaphysical concepts and of his struggle toward a fully consistent theory of material substances.

_A Companion to Ancient Philosophy_ provides a comprehensive and current overview of the history of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy from its origins until late antiquity. Comprises an extensive collection of original essays, featuring contributions from both rising stars and senior scholars of ancient philosophy Integrates analytic and continental traditions Explores the development of various disciplines, such as mathematics, logic, grammar, physics, and medicine, in relation to ancient philosophy Includes an illuminating introduction, bibliography, chronology, maps and an index.