António Pedro Mesquita

In Categories 5, Aristotle declares that what seems most distinctive (ἴδιον) of substance is that, being one and the same in number, it can receive contraries. This assertion involves a problem, since this property is only unqualified true of individual substances. After briefly setting out the problem, I start by examining and rejecting some expedient ways of explaining it away and then give a short history of its reception in Neoplatonic commentary. Finally, I show how the dominant Neoplatonic interpretation fails to solve the problem and submit an alternative solution that achieves this result.

The philosophical and philological study of Aristotle fragments and lost works has fallen somewhat into the background since the 1960’s. This is regrettable considering the different and innovative directions the study of Aristotle has taken in the last decades. This collection of new peer-reviewed essays applies the latest developments and trends of analysis, criticism, and methodology to the study of Aristotle’s fragments. The individual essays use the fragments as tools of interpretation, shed new light on different areas of Aristotle philosophy, and lay bridges between Aristotle’s lost and extant works. The first part shows how Aristotle frames parts of his own understanding of Philosophy in his published, 'popular' work. The second part deals with issues of philosophical interpretation in Aristotle’s extant works which can be illuminated by fragments of his lost works. The philosophical issues treated in this section range from Theology to Natural Science, Psychology, Politics, and Poetics. As a whole, the book articulates a new approach to Aristotle’s lost works, by providing a reassessment and new methodological explorations of the fragments.

This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15-8a12. Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces this topic in his analysis of relatives and maintains that, although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely the pairs knowledge/knowable and perception/perceptible, and argues at length for the priority of the second relative over the first one in each case. Through a close reading of this text, the author analyses Aristotle's arguments for the thesis of the exceptional character of these pairs and shows that all of them are unsuccessful in supporting the thesis. In order to draw this conclusion, the author highlights and carefully considers the properties that Aristotle is committed to attributing to relatives, taking into account the metaphysical framework of the Categories as well as their specificities within the set of non-substantial categories. Then, he shows that Aristotle's mature views on relatives in the Metaphysics can be construed as committing him to the rejection of such a thesis. Although the issue of natural simultaneity is just one of several that Aristotle considers in his discussion of relatives throughout Categories 7, it is a particularly relevant issue, since it involves a number of puzzles whose analysis allows for a better understanding of the very notion of relativity in Aristotle. This is the first book to explore this issue from the perspective of illuminating the Aristotelian views on relatives. Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Aristotle, ancient philosophy in general, and metaphysics.

Au début du deuxième livre des Seconds Analytiques ( APo. ), Aristote présente quatre types de recherche possible, qu’il distingue de la manière suivante : la recherche du que ; la recherche du pourquoi ; la recherche de si c’est ; et la recherche de ce que c’est. Le sens propre et les connexions mutuelles du premier, deuxième et quatrième types de recherche ne posent pas de grand problème, ayant par ailleurs été partiellement exposés dans d’autres contextes. Il en va cependant autrement du troisième type de recherche. La pertinence de telles difficultés peut être saisie par la double lecture que permet la clause grecque ei estin (« si c’est ») qui s’y rapporte. Devons-nous la comprendre dans le sens de « si telle chose est (ou : si telle chose existe ) » (par exemple, « si le centaure existe ») ou dans le sens de « si ceci est tel » (par exemple, « si ceci est un centaure »)? Dans le but de répondre à cette question, nous adopterons le programme suivant : 1. En premier lieu, nous ferons une analyse aussi proche et détaillée que possible de APo. II 1-2, de manière à déterminer le sens qui doit y être donné à la clause ei estin (« si c’est »). 2. Nous chercherons ensuite à démontrer la conclusion à laquelle nous avons abouti en nous aidant des chapitres suivants des APo., chapitres dans lesquels la question est à nouveau explicitement et implicitement invoquée. 3. Enfin, nous analyserons les autres passages du corpus aristotélicien dans lesquels la critique a relevé de supposées « hypothèses d’existence », et ce, de manière à vérifier si ceux-ci sont susceptibles d’une lecture compatible avec celle qui aura été donnée de APo. II 1-2. Nous en conclurons que l’on ne retrouve aucune trace de préoccupations existentielles dans les passages qui ont fait l’objet de cette recherche ni, en général, dans les passages connexes du corpus aristotélicien. Ainsi, la lecture existentielle de la clause ei estin et des hypothèses scientifiques qui y sont liées sont plutôt le fruit d’une contamination moderne.

This collection of new essays by an international group of scholars closely examine the works of Aristotle's Organon. The Organon is the general title given to the collection of Aristotle's logical works: Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations. This extremely influential collection gave Aristotle the reputation of being the founder of logic, and has helped shaped the development of logic for over two millennia. The chapters in this volume cover topics pertaining to each of the six works traditionally included in the Organon as well as its manuscript tradition. In addition, a comprehensive introduction by the editors discusses Aristotle and logic, the composition and order of the Organon, and the authenticity, title, and chronology of the treatises that make up these works New Essays on Aristotle's Organon offers a valuable insight into this collection for students and scholars working on Aristotle, the works of the Organon, or the philosophy of logic more broadly.

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.

The aim of this paper is to clarify and support the following hypothesis: the four propositional forms of Aristotelian syllogistics (AaB, AeB, AiB, AoB) 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 (whether extensional or intensional in modem terms) 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: (i) how to interpret the kind of predication present in each type of syllogistic proposition; (ii) 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.

The present article aims to clear up three different, though connected, questions: 1st. The significance of the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 2nd. The significance of the distinction be tween two types of accident (‘strict’ accident and per se accident) in the Posterior Analytics and in the Metaphysics, namely in its alleged relationship with the double definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics. 3rd. The meaning of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, namely from the point of view of its putative identification with propria predicates. In the course of the analysis, the answers given to these three questions are the following (in inverse order to their presentation): 1. By definition, the same predicate can never be a per se accident and a proprium, except incidentally, namely when regarded ‘at a certain moment’ (pote) or ‘in relation to something else’ (pros ti). In fact, despite Aristotle’s silence about the status of per se accidents within the framework of the predicables, they have there its own peculiar logical location, namely under the first definition of ‘accident’. 2. The distinction between ‘strict’ accident and per se accident, on the one hand, and the double definition of ‘accident’, on the other, do not coalesce, though they partially overlap. The second definition of ‘accident’ in the Topics subsumes only ‘strict ’ accidents, while the first definition is generally valid for ‘strict’ accidents and per se accidents. 3. As far as an educated guess can go on historical matters, we can suppose that the second definition of ‘accident’ was conceived by Aristotle to cover the only kind of accidents recognised by him when writing the Topics, while, by that time, the first definition was thought merely as a alternative negative definition. However, it is the schema provided by the first definition that allows a precise technical definition of the two types of accidents, which nowhere can be found in Aristotle texts. In the final part of the article, we try to reconstruct this technical definition.

The aim of this article is to characterise the concept of difference in Aristotle, both as a predicate of the genus (differentia divisiva) and as a predicate of the species (differentia constitutiva). 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.

In this article, we aim to offer a new overall interpretation of Heraclitus’ philosophy, through an analysis of his own implicit conception of ‘philosophy’, as it is insinuated in the few but important (and frequently underestimated) fragments where the word philia occurs (B87, B123). In these fragments (as in B54), a clear distinction between reality and appearance is drawn for the first time in the history of philosophy; and, accordingly, philosophy itself is hinted at as a direct ‘attachment’ to reality, beyond the appearances that conceal it. Using this result as a hermeneutic principle, a thorough survey of the most significant fragments is then proposed. The outcome of such a survey is, hopefully, the presentation of Heraclitus’ main doctrines as a coherent whole.

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 (Ancient Medicine XX, On the Nature of Man I-IV), 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 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".

Dans un article précédent, nous avons essayé de réfuter la thèse selon laquelle la philosophie possède une nature essentiellement indéfinissable. En utilisant cette fois une voie positive, nous cherchons d’établir les conditions d’une définition de la philosophie qui contienne organiquement les éléments suivants: d’abord, la philosophie en tant qu’activité et en tant qu’ensemble de problèmes; deuxièmement, la philosophie et sa nature radicalement créatrice; en dernier lieu, l’identification de la philosophie avec un intérêt irréductiblement philosophique de la raison elle-même. Après la présentation philosophique de la définition proposée, il y a lieu a une discussion de ses virtualités pédagogiques.

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 (as prima philosophia) 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.