Christof Rapp

This contribution comments on Aristotle’s _De Motu Animalium_ 1 (MA 1). In this chapter Aristotle gives a general introduction to the treatise, posing the question of what the common cause or explanation of animal self-movement consists in. For the first time he formulates a general requirement for all kinds of movement, namely movement presupposes something that is unmoved. Afterwards, he points out that within animals the joints serve as inner resting points and that they are required in order to facilitate the animal’s self-movement. The author argues that the structure of joints or something he calls ‘the joint model’ is significant for the understanding of some of the treatise’s key tenets.

In der neueren Forschung gehören die Substanzbücher der Metaphysik zu den meistdiskutierten Aristotelischen Texten. In den letzten zweieinhalb Jahrzehnten entwickelte sich eine umfangreiche Diskussion, die zu einem ganz neuen Bild von der Aristotelischen Substanzlehre führte. Eine für die Seminararbeit zugängliche Übersicht über diese Diskussion und den neuesten Stand der Forschung lag aber bisher im deutschen Sprachraum nicht vor. Der Band hilft diesem Mangel ab. Seine Beiträge geben unterschiedliche Standpunkte wieder und reflektieren den jeweiligen Forschungsstand, so dass sowohl für die Seminardiskussion als auch für die eigene Beschäftigung mit diesem Thema eine direkt aus der Forschung gewonnene Grundlage vorliegt. MIT BEITRÄGEN VON: Andreas Anagnostopoulos, Thomas Buchheim, Mary Louise Gill, Donald Morrison, Christof Rapp, Holmer Steinfath, Walter Mesch und Michael V. Wodin.

A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are political animals to Aquinas' invocation of natural law, it may seem that pre-modern philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good, and that just political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this assumption is, at best, too crude. From very early, for instance in the ancient sophists' contrast between nomos and physis, there was recognition that political arrangements may be precisely artificial, not natural, and it may be questioned whether even such supposed naturalists as Aristotle in fact adopt the quick inference from natural to good. The papers in this volume trace the complex interrelations between nature and such concepts as law, legitimacy, and justice, covering a wide historical range stretching from Plato and the Sophists to Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Cicero, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, ancient Christian thinkers, and philosophers of both the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages.