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From Puzzles to Principles?: Essays on Aristotle's DialecticLexington Books. 1999.Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an …Read more
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18Mary Louise Gill, "Aristotle on Substance: The Paradox of Unity" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (3): 444. 1992.
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11One and many in Aristotle's MetaphysicsParmenides. 1989.This book is part of a larger study of the problem of the one and the many in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Although this portion can be read and understood on its own, some remarks about the contents of the two sister volumes will be helpful.
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18Kritik über Jedan (2000): Willensfreiheit bei Aristoteles?Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch Fur Antike Und Mittelalter 7 (1): 243-249. 2002.
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6One and Many in Aristotel's 'Metaphysics' Alpha-Delta, Parmenides Publishing, Las Vegas 2088Elenchos 30 (1): 177-188. 2009.
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20Aristotle's Political VirtuesThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 3 154-161. 1998.This paper argues that Aristotle conceives happiness not primarily as an exercise of virtue in private or with friends, but as the exercise of virtue in governing an ideal state. The best states are knit together so tightly that the interests of one person are the same as the interests of all. Hence, a person who acts for his or her own good must also act for the good of all fellow citizens. It follows that discussions of Aristotle’s altruism and egoism are misconceived.
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3Poetry, History, and DialecticThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 3 146-153. 1998.Twice in the Poetics, Aristotle contrasts poetry with history. Whatever its didactic value, the contrast has not seemed to readers of special philosophical interest. The aim of this paper is to show that this contrast is philosophically significant not just for our understanding of tragedy but also for the light it sheds on Aristotle’s overall methodology. I shall show how he uses the method sketched in the Topics to define tragedy and explain why the same method will not define history. In part…Read more
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11One and Many in Aristotle’s Metaphysics: The Central BooksParmenides Publishing. 2005.The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognised as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. This title aims to examine the Central Books.
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3Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (review)Review of Metaphysics 50 (3): 687-688. 1997.Joe Sachs has a refreshing and unusual view of Aristotle's Physics: he thinks that it is a physics. In contrast, most recent writers have seen the work as an exposition of the way nature is spoken and thought about, as metaphysics, or as an anticipation of modern physics. The reason the work is often misunderstood, Sachs maintains, is that translators render it into meaningless terms rooted in medieval Latin translations. Aristotle's own "philosophic vocabulary is... incapable of dogmatic use" b…Read more
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36Colloquium 2 The Metaphysics of the SyllogismProceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 33 (1): 31-60. 2018.This paper addresses a central metaphysical issue that has not been recognized: what kind of entity is a syllogism? I argue that the syllogism cannot be merely a mental entity. Some counterpart must exist in nature. A careful examination of the Posterior Analytics’s distinction between the syllogism of the fact and the syllogism of the reasoned fact shows that we must set aside contemporary logic to appreciate Aristotle’s logic, enables us to understand the validity of the scientific syllogism t…Read more
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27Heraclitus and the Possibility of MetaphysicsReview of Metaphysics 70 (3). 2017.Heraclitus is famous for affirming contradictions, though most readers do not regard the content of his fragments as contradictory. Examining fragments 1 and 50, this article argues that Heraclitus aims to assert a special class of contradictions, the intrinsic conflict between the content of any universal metaphysical claim and the assertion or reception of that claim. Such contradictions undermine the possibility of metaphysics as a science that knows all things. Second, the article argues tha…Read more
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20A Tale of Two Metaphysics: Alison Stone's Environmental HegelHegel Bulletin 26 (1-2): 1-12. 2005.
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19Hegel and the Problem of the DifferentiaProceedings of the Hegel Society of America 10 191-202. 1990.
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Unity in Aristotle's "Metaphysics"Dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1980.Since unity is always explained through something else, it is not primary; it is not the highest cause. Further, secondary unities are not understood through a primary "one"; rather, all ones are understood through being, actuality, etc. Hence, unlike being, unity is not a . In order that "one" function as it does in the Metaphysics it cannot be a . In the second part of the fourth chapter, I discuss Aristotle's definition of "one", and I argue that "one" is analogically defined. ;The final thre…Read more
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TelosIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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102Humor, Dialectic, and Human Nature in PlatoEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (2): 319-330. 2011.Drawing principally on the Symposium, this paper argues that humor in Plato’s dialogues serves two serious purposes. First, Plato uses puns and other devices to disarm the reader’s defenses and thereby allow her to consider philosophical ideas that she would otherwise dismiss. Second, insofar as human beings can only be understood through unchanging forms that we fail to attain, our lives are discontinuous and only partly intelligible. Since, though, the discontinuity between expectation and act…Read more
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93Spinoza on the Political Value of Freedom of ReligionHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 21 (2): 167-182. 2004.The last chapter of Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) is a brief for freedom of religion. In our enthusiasm for Spinoza's conclusion it is easy to overlook the blatant contradiction between this thesis and the central claim of the immediately preceding chapter that "right over matters of religion is vested entirely in the sovereign." There Spinoza emphasizes the necessity that there be but one sovereign in the state and the threat that autonomous religious authorities would pose to …Read more
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77Aristotle’s Rethinking of PhilosophyProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 2 107-114. 2008.For Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, philosophy is itself a rethinking. There are other branches of knowledge, like medicine and mathematics, that each grasp some particular subject matter. Since philosophy or, as it has come to be called, metaphysics is the highest science, its job is to grasp somehow all the other sciences and all their subjects. If the science of a subject requires a type of thinking proper to the subject, then the science of that science requires a rethinking of this and …Read more
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47Primary Ousia (review)Review of Metaphysics 46 (3): 625-627. 1993.Loux sets the stage with a discussion of ousia in the Categories. There, he claims, Aristotle maintained that "basic subjects" are ontologically fundamental, and the essence of each such subject is its species. Loux thinks that Aristotle was tacitly committed to the "intersection" of these two, which he terms the "unanalyzability principle": An ousia's falling under its species is a "primitive... fact about it... not susceptible of further ontological analysis".
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67Jacob Klein on the Dispute Between Plato and Aristotle Regarding NumberNew Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 11 249-270. 2011.By examining Klein’s discussion of the difference between Plato and Aristotle regarding the ontology of number, this article aims to spells out the significanceof that debate both in itself and for the development of the later mathematical sciences. This is accomplished by explicating and expanding Klein’s account of the differences that exist in the understanding of number presented by these two thinkers. It is ultimately argued that Klein’s analysis can be used to show that the transition from…Read more
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42The Idealism of Hegel’s SystemThe Owl of Minerva 34 (1): 19-58. 2002.This paper aims to show Hegel’s system to be a self-generating and conceptually closed system and, therefore, an idealism. Many readers have agreed that Hegel intends his logic to be a self-generating, closed system, but they assume that the two branches of Realphilosophie, Nature and Spirit, must involve the application of logical categories to some non-conceptual reality external to them. This paper argues that Nature emerges from logic by the reapplication of the opening logical categories to…Read more
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195Freshman Seminar Film CoursesTeaching Philosophy 28 (4): 351-365. 2005.The aim of this paper is to explain how to design and teach a course that meets the special requirements of Freshman Seminar programs by using feature films to examine philosophical themes. Two such courses are discussed. By organizing each course around a theme, the teacher can use the films to illustrate and, sometimes, critique philosophical positions that she elaborates. Discussing the films, the students develop analytical and interpretive skills important for more rigorous philosophy cours…Read more
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68Sachs, Joe. Aristotle's Physics: A Guided Study (review)Review of Metaphysics 50 (3): 687-689. 1997.
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9Colloquium 8Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 5 (1): 247-276. 1989.
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