Christopher Frey

In Physics I 9, Aristotle argues against the Platonists’ theory of change. The Platonists employ only two principles: form and an intrinsically privative underlying subject. We must, Aristotle contends, distinguish underlying subject and privation. Only then can matter be understood properly as the element in change that desires or reaches out toward the divine and good. I develop Aristotle’s triadic account of change and emphasize his claim that natural movement is a variety of formal perfection. For Aristotle, when matter desires form it does not strive for something it is not; it reaches out toward what, in one manner of being, it already is. I also clarify the conception of desire Aristotle attributes to matter and show that it is central to understanding three enigmatic Aristotelian theses: (i) nature desires what is better and so desires being (which is better than not being), (ii) all natural bodies desire to participate in the everlasting and divine and this is the end for the sake of which natural movement occurs, and (iii) just as the object of desire moves an agent, so Aristotle’s god, the divine unmoved mover, causes motion by being loved.

Hylomorphism is the view that particular objects are composites of form and matter. Something’s form is what causes it to be the specific kind of being it is and this form is realized in a suitable matter. When contemporary philosophers defend a broadly hylomorphic metaphysics and deign to discuss historical precursors at all, Aristotle is typically the only figure they engage. But hylomorphic theory after Aristotle is both complex and rich, and what we miss if we neglect this history is significant. This collection offers an unusually thorough presentation of this history. It will be invaluable for those interested in hylomorphism and of interest to anyone who correctly views philosophy as a historically... Read More.

What is it for the soul to be the form of a living organism’s natural, instrumental body and the internal principle of its vital activities? How are we to understand how an organism’s vital activities are realized materially? The author attempts to answer these questions by discussing two very different models of the soul/body relation: the assumption of bodies by angels and the possession of bodies by demons. The assumed body that an angel employs instrumentally is not capable of vital activity at all. The possessed body that a demon employs instrumentally is capable of vital activity, but the demon serves as an external principle of its movements. The author argues that a living organism’s vital activities stand alone in having the soul as an internal principle of its instrumental body’s movements and explains what this means.

According to Aristotle, the three main varieties of soul – nutritive, perceptual, and rational – are hierarchically ordered. I develop and defend an interpretation of the soul’s unity that centers on Aristotle’s attempt to explain this hierarchy’s organizing cause. Aristotle draws an analogy between this series of souls and the series of figures. I first elucidate the fundamental feature both series share: each series’ prior members are present in capacity in its posterior members. I do so by examining several other cases – mathematical, biological, and physical – where Aristotle appeals to presence in capacity. I then argue that an organism’s living body is continuous by nature. That is, an organism’s soul is the principle, cause, and end of a single, articulate activity of living and each of an organism’s vital bodily movements are aspects or partial manifestations of this unitary, natural activity. This account of natural continuity is, I contend, the key to understanding what it is for one soul to be present in capacity in another. And this account of presence in capacity is, I contend, the key to understanding what it is for a soul that comprises parts to be a unity.

We would also like to thank Mary Catherine Gormally for giving us permission to reprint G. E. M. Anscombe's paper Practical Truth. Our interest in Anscombe's work on practical truth, and how it might fit into an account of practical reason and wisdom, was the impetus for us to gather philosophers together to think about the prospects of the concept of practical truth for contemporary theory. We are also deeply grateful to Sarah Broadie, who graciously allowed us to reprint her essay Practical Truth in Aristotle. Though she passed away before being able to see the completed volume, the inspiration her work has given to the authors of these essays is a testament to her lasting influence on this topic. Finally, we would like to thank Candace Vogler, whose work on Anscombe helped to light a path for us, and whose friendship and support throughout the long gestation of this project has been a tremendous gift to us both.

Aristotle employs three distinct but interrelated concepts of rest: kinetic rest, energic rest, and telic rest. The third variety, telic rest, is crucial to Aristotle’s natural philosophy. Anything that moves or acts by nature does so in part for the sake of realizing its form more completely. There is, in the fullest attainment of this good, a kind of rest without cessation or destruction. The peace that telic rest affords is not a kind of stasis; it consists in perfect and complete activity. By clarifying the varieties of rest Aristotle employs, I aim to provide a richer understanding of Aristotelian natures. By emphasizing the role of telic rest, I aim to illuminate a universal and perennial aspect of the human condition, an aspect that both drives us to gain knowledge of the natural world and unites us with that world’s divine cause.

I argue that the most common interpretation of experiential transparency’s significance is laden with substantive and ultimately extraneous metaphysical commitments. I divest this inflated interpretation of its unwarranted encumbrances and consolidate the precipitate into a position I call core transparency. Core Transparency is a thesis about experience’s presentational character. The objects of perceptual experience are there, present to us, in a way that the objects of most beliefs and judgments are not. According to core transparency, it is in the disclosure of that which is central to experience’s presentational character, an intrinsic and irreducibly phenomenal aspect of experience I call phenomenal presence, that transparency’s significance principally consists. Phenomenal presence is uniquely positioned to illuminate the relationship between perceptual experience’s most important features: its intentionality and its phenomenality. The position I defend comprises two main claims. (1) The representational features of experience, understood in isolation from experiential phenomenality, neither constitute nor explain phenomenal presence. Consequently, the representational features of experience neither determine completely nor explain exhaustively experiential phenomenality. (2) Phenomenal presence is not representational, but is nevertheless the minimal realization of experiential intentionality.

To which science, if any, does the intellect’s study belong? Though the student of nature studies every other vital capacity, most interpreters maintain that Aristotle excludes the intellect from natural science’s domain. I survey the three main reasons that lead to this interpretation: the intellect (i) is not realized physiologically in a proprietary organ, (ii) its naturalistic study would corrupt natural science’s boundaries and leave no room for other forms of inquiry, and (iii) it is not, as all other vital capacities are, a principle of movement and rest. I show that the third consideration is the most significant and then defend the view that the student of nature can (and ought to) study the intellect despite its not being a principle of movement. I argue that all of an organism’s vital activities have one and only one nature as their principle, namely, the organism’s soul considered as a unitary whole. The student of nature must concern herself with whatever activities are involved in the coming to be, development, and full realization of these natural forms.

Philosophers of action and perception have reached a consensus: the term ‘intentionality’ has significantly different senses in their respective fields. But Anscombe argues that these distinct senses are analogically united in such a way that one cannot understand the concept if one focuses exclusively on its use in one’s preferred philosophical sub-discipline. She highlights three salient points of analogy: (i) intentional objects are given by expressions that employ a “description under which;” (ii) intentional descriptions are typically vague and indeterminate; and (iii) intentional descriptions may be false. I explore these three features as they apply to both perception and action and defend Anscombe’s view that the analogical concept of intentionality is a grammatical concept. That is, there are two distinctive linguistic/social practices that involve, respectively, a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ and a special sense of the question ‘What?’ To competently ask and answer the questions that constitute these practices not only reflects, but also conveys a grammatical understanding of intentionality’s basic, formal structure.

Aristotle outlines two methods in De Anima that one can employ when one investigates the soul. The first focuses on the exercises of a living organism’s vital capacities and the proper objects upon which these activities are directed. The second focuses on a living organism’s nature, its internal principle of movement and rest, and the single end for the sake of which this principle is exercised. I argue that these two methods yield importantly different, and prima facie incompatible, views about what souls are. According to the first, the soul is a set of independently specifiable capacities that are related to one another in a manner that effects a unity of soul over and above the multiplicity. According to the second, the soul is a single, unitary nature that has a living organism’s form as its end. I bring the differences between these two conceptions of soul into relief and then attempt to reconcile the opposing views in a way privileges the conception according to which the soul is a unitary nature. In doing so, I discuss the following interrelated topics: (a) what makes a capacity a part of soul, (b) the relationship between the parts of soul within a given organism, (c) how a soul can be a unity while comprising various parts, (d) whether it is possible to give an adequate definition of life or soul, (e) what unity obtains among the various ways life is said that would allow for a proper, scientific investigation of life, and (f) the principle that grounds the hierarchy of souls—the nutritive, the perceptual, and the rational.

The dominant interpretation ofMetaphysicsΘ.8 commits Aristotle to the claim that the heavenly bodies’ eternal movements are not the exercises of capacities. Against this, I argue that these movements are the result of necessarily exercised capacities. I clarify what it is for a heavenly body to possess a nature and argue that a body’s nature cannot be a final cause unless the natural body possesses capacities that are exercised for the sake of its naturequaform. This discussion yields a better understanding of what capacities are, what explanatory work capacities do, and what it is to possess a nature.

I argue that an experience’s sensuous elements play an ineliminable role in our being intentionally directed upon an entity through perception. More specifically, I argue that whenever we appreciate a sensuous element in experience, we appreciate an intrinsic and irreducibly phenomenal aspect of experience that I call phenomenal presence – an aspect of experience that I show is central to its presentational character – and that the appreciation of phenomenal presence is necessary for perceptual intentionality. If an experience is to possess intentionality, the experience itself must make an entity available as an object of perceptually-based singular beliefs and the experiencing subject, by virtue of undergoing the experience, must in some sense be able to appreciate that it has done so. Phenomenal presence is necessary for perceptual intentionality because it plays an ineliminable role in making an entity available to its subject in this way

My topic is the fundamental Aristotelian division between the animate and the inanimate. In particular, I discuss the transformation that occurs when an inanimate body comes to be ensouled. When nutriment is transformed into flesh it is first changed into blood. I argue that blood is unique in being, at one and the same time, both animate and inanimate; it is inanimate nutriment in actuality (or in activity) and animate flesh in potentiality (or in capacity). I provide a detailed exposition of these manners of being (covering individual substances, artifacts, and mixtures), apply these insights to the case of blood, and then argue that blood's curious status is central to understanding hylomorphism in living organisms.