Pascal Massie

This introduction to Volume 5 of the Washington University Review of Philosophy, dedicated to the philosophy of aging, proposes three main areas where philosophy can intervene in the debate on aging: a) Philosophy must explore and expose the assumptions that lurk on both sides of the controversy between proponents of life extension (often advocates of transhumanism) and proponents of “natural life cycles;” b) Philosophy must resist the reduction of aging to the biomedical sphere alone and consider how it intersects with the social, existential, and historical dimensions of our lives; c)Philosophy (and particularly phenomenology) must explore the specific features of the temporality of aging without limiting itself to the first-person account of the aging body, but instead relate it to the generational and trans-generational aspect of the aging process.

The issue of prime matter divides Aristotle’s modern commentators on two questions: a) whether Aristotle was truly committed to it b) whether the notion is even coherent. Those who declare prime matter incoherent do so on the ground that what is deprived of characteristics or properties is simply nothing. Those who try to salvage the notion claim that it must have some characteristics focus on extension. As it stands, the debate turns on the possibility or impossibility of reifying prime matter. If we can, then it can be a coherent ontological category; if we cannot, then it is incoherent. This paper proposes a different path: indeed, prōtē hulē cannot be reified, but this does not make it incoherent. This, however, invites us to pursue ontology beyond substantialism and essentialism and takes us to the limits of Aristotelianism.

Recent developments in the continental tradition have taken a realist turn that reveals an oscillation between, on the one hand, an ontology of virtuality that thinks of reality as process and continuum (albeit a continuum of differences or events) and, on the other hand, the resurgence of an ontology of objects and essences guided by the desire to retain the individuality of beings. The dilemma goes something like this: if we embrace a processual ontology, we risk losing the manifestedness of objects, the way they insist in being in their unique presence. Objects become mere epiphenomena of deeper, subterranean forces. If, however, we embrace an ontology of objects, we assume a universe composed of separate substances; objects are all there is (even if they are withdrawn). This article argues that freeing ontology from correlationism does not entail construing ontology in terms of objects. Individuals are products rather than primitive ontological terms.

The conditions for an investigation of Achard of Saint Victor (who died in 1171) have only recently become available. Now the discovery of a very significant turn in the history of twelfth-century thought is open to examination. The author focuses on Achard’s claim concerning an ontologically primary plurality. In the very title of Achard’s main treatise, De unitate Dei et pluralitate creaturarum, it is the word ‘et’ that joins together unity and plurality, expressing the core of Achard’s ontological insight, whereby a plurality is said to be true if it is grounded in absolute unity. That is to say, this plurality is not derived from unity (as would be assumed in an emanative account of plurality) but rather “coheres” with unity. Unity, likeness, and equality are the three terms that dialectically constitute the primary plurality. In this sense, true plurality is plurality without difference, without alterity and is thus convertible with identity. The essay examines (a) Achard’s doctrine of true plurality as multiple unity, (b) its application to the question of the Trinity and (c) its application to the question of the plurality of creatures and the nature of individuation.

The master argument posits a metaphysical thesis: Diodorus does away with Aristotle’s dunamis understood as a power simultaneously oriented toward being and non-being and proclaims that possibilities that fail to actualize are simply nothing. My contention is that this claim is not a mere application of Diodorus’ contribution to modal logic. Rather, Diodorus creates an ontologico-temporal concept of possibility and impossibility. Diodorus envisions the future as the past that the future will become. Since what will have been can never be the accomplishment of a possibility that did not obtain, and since the future is destined to become past, any futural possibility that doesn’t actualize is neither futural nor even possible.

It is surprisingly difficult to justify private property. Two questions are at stake: (a) a metaphysical and juridical one concerning the nature of property and (b) an ethical one concerning our attitude toward wealth. This issue reached an unprecedented importance during the 12th and 13th centuries as a new moral ideal emerged. This essays analyses the controversy (with emphasis on Bonaventure’s Defense of the Mendicants) by first locating it in relation to the philosophical and theological authorities as well as the Roman law. It argues that the dispute between the defenders of paupertas altissima and their opponents concerns the limit of the law. Gerard of Abbeville and John XXII saw a contradiction in a right to use that would exclude ownership. Yet, what the Franciscans were seeking was use without right. To relate to the world as something that is essentially inappropriable is to seek a form of life (a rule) prior to the law. Centuries after, such a possibility remains to be discovered.