Joel Cox

While Aristotle counts many things as members of the category of substances that seem intuitively to be substances, one wonders whether Aristotle is right not to include social entities like families, city-states, or mobs, in any of his explications of substances. According to Aristotle, the persons who are in a social entity bear active powers, but he is silent on whether the social entity itself can. In this paper, I examine whether Aristotle rightly and intentionally does not include social entities in his list of things that are substances and can thus have active powers. I argue that either communities are substances in virtue of their status as bearers of powers or Aristotle is wrong that only substances are the bearers of powers. To make this argument, I begin with a primer on Aristotle’s discussion of active powers, followed by an account of how Aristotle regards social entities in the Politics. Next, I discuss one contemporary view on the ontology of social entities with an eye for how this account shapes our understanding of the actions and powers of social entities. Putting these pieces together, the paper will articulate Aristotle’s plural power problem, which will require defenders of Aristotle to pick a horn of the dilemma to make Aristotle’s views compatible with a more accurate understanding of social entities.

Few debates conjure the angst, emotion, and conviction of the debate surrounding abortion and for good reason. The debate brings to the forefront multiple competing goods, including autonomy and respect for life, while affecting individual lives, the law, and politics in complex ways. Within this discussion, one of the preeminent issues is the status of the fetus: Is the fetus an actualized person or merely a potential person? While this question appears to lie at the heart of the conversation, it is based on a misguided view about the nature of the fetus. In this paper, I attempt to clarify the status of the fetus to hopefully re-situate this debate in a more helpful place. I am arguing that a fetus is an imminent person rather than a potential person and that imminent entities have a special moral standing greater than that of potential entities. To make this argument, I first provide background on different views about the metaphysical and moral status of fetuses to provide context for the view that I espouse. Then, I define and argue for the concept of imminence, explaining how it is different from potentiality and grants a greater moral standing to fetuses. Finally, I respond to objections, including arguments concerning whether imminence is a stage of existence, whether the fetus can be both an imminent and a potential person, and whether the personhood of the fetus matters to the debate around abortion.