António Pedro Mesquita

First, there will be as close and detailed an analysis as possible of the first two chapters of the second book of Posterior Analytics, which constitute the canonical place of the controversy, in Order to determine the meaning that should be restored there to the clause εἰ ἔστιν. After this, we will try to corroborate the conclusion we arrive at concerning the clause mentioned above by applying it to the subsequent passages of the same book where this question is raised again, either implicitly or explicitly. Finally, an examination will be made of the rest of the passages of the Aristotelian corpus, where the critic has found the occurrence of the alleged “hypothesis of existence”, chiefly in the second book of the Prior Analytics, in order to verify if such passages also offer the possibility of a reading consistent with that offered by the first two chapters initially studied. The conclusion will be that no traces of existential concern are found in any of the places searched, nor in general, in any of the connected texts within the Aristotelian corpus, and that the reading of the clause εἰ ἔστιν and of the corresponding scientific hypotheses from an existential angle are the result of a modern contamination whose origin will be diagnosed.

In this article we try to demonstrate two theses concerning both the nature and the object of Aristotelian Metaphysics. These theses are the following: 1 - Substance has not in Aristotle a purely instrumental value: in fact it refers, by its own nature, the whole of those beings which really are, that is, to individuals', 2 -For this reason, Metaphysics, as science of ens qua ens, performs a specific and unique role within Aristotle’s thought and in this role it cannot be replaced by any other science. We argue these theses through previous translation and commentary of Metaphysics Z1. Further discussion will then show how they both assume and implicate the fundamental difference between Plato’s and Aristotle's ontologies.

The deep relationship between the Phaedo and the Parmenides has long been recognised. However, this relationship is usually seen from the point of view of the alleged criticism in Plato's Parmenides of the theory of ideas contained in the Phaedo and in the dialogues which are doctrinally akin to it. For this reason, the thesis argued for in this article is a much rarer one: namely, that the Parmenides represents, within the unity of Plato's thought, the single moment in which the theory of ideas proposed in the Phaedo is radically demonstrated and the notion of 'idea' becomes fully clarified. The objective of this paper is to investigate both dialogues from the point of view of the notion of 'idea' that they implicitly propound, taking into consideration two crucial passages of the Phaedo and the Parmenides whose significance, although frequently ignored, permits overall such a notion to be established. Through this commentary it will then be possible to attain, as its final goal, an enlightening understanding of the nature of platonic 'idea'. But another consequence follows from it: the preclusion of the common, yet particularly misleading, translation of είδος by "Form".

Any analysis of the Hippocratic anthropology must begin by taking a stand on two quite different issues. On the one hand, it must ascertain a precise and definite meaning of the word ‘Hippocratic’ in such a context, considering the historical problems surrounding the 'real' Hippocrates and the doctrinal heterogeneity of the Hippocratic collection. On the other hand, it must justify the very possibility of an anthropology within the Hippocratic tradition, by accommodating it with the obvious animadversion that its most representative works show towards any philosophical or speculative inquiry. The first problem can be solved by purely historical means, viz. by restricting the object of analysis to the texts that admittedly represent the views of the Hippocratic school. Not so with the second one, which constitutes the truesignificant problem from a philosophical point of view and with which the present article is therefore concerned. After discussing the texts where the question on the nature of man is posed, a general survey of the Hippocratic conception of the theoretical and scientific foundations of clinical practice is given, in order to understand the Statement according to which it is to medicine, and not to philosophy, that an answer to such a question truly belongs. From such a survey a thesis arises: that, according to the Hippocratic perspective, the appropriate answer to the question on the nature of man is not the one that seeks to determine what man is, even by means of the empirical methods of medicine, but the one that reshapes the question itself, thereby replacing the philosophical focus on the knowing of man, for the sake of knowledge, by the clinical focus on the caring of man, for the sake of man himself.

The aim of this paper is to clarify and support the following hypothesis: the four propositional forms of Aristotelian syllogistics state relations between universals, or are primarily conceptual. We characterize as “conceptual” those propositions which deal only with concepts and ignore any reference to objects. In a conceptual proposition, therefore, the reference is tacitly present in the simple occurrence of the terms, but is neutralised or cancelled out, because it is only the intension of these terms, that is, the concepts, which are dealt with in the proposition. On the other hand, we characterize as “objectual” those propositions which deal directly or indirectly of objects, even when, as it is often the case, a concept has to be assumed in the determination of these objects. In the present paper we try to confirm this hypothesis, by answering the following questions: how to interpret the kind of predication present in each type of syllogistic proposition; if these predications really express relations between universals in the given sense and, therefore, if the propositions that express them are conceptual propositions in this sense; and to what measure can these propositions serve to introduce, also, objectual propositions.

This article, The ontological argument in Plato: the problem of immortality, discusses the interpretation of Socrates’ last demonstration of the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo as an ”ontological argument” and tries to refute this interpretation through an examination of the concept of immortality in Plato and its implications on the central relation soul/life. At the same time, it argues that the ontological argument should be seen as the very back-bone of Plato’s ontology, a point of view which will be developed in a forthcoming paper.

The aim of this article is to characterise the concept of difference in Aristotle, both as a predicate of the genus and as a predicate of the species. We then try to classify these two dimensions of difference within the framework of the predicables. The general conclusion is that the differentia constitutiva is an essential predicate, logically analogous to the genus in this respect, while the differentia divisiva cannot be located within that framework because the predicables are implicitly thought by Aristotle as forms of predication in which the predicate has an extension greater than, or equal to, the subject.

The first part of this article attempted to refute the interpretation of Phd. 102a-107a as being the canonic place of the ontological argument in Platonic thought. The second part of this article will attempt to outline three objectives: to show that the ontological argument intervenes in Plato's thought not as a strict démonstration but as a central and permanent structure whereby the idea is necessarily deduced from the sensible; to show that this structure is also present in Saint Anselm's ontological argument as its philosophical meaning; to elucidate how Parmenides' ontology is the paradigm which inspired both Plato and Saint Anselm.