Download or read book Ammonius On Aristotle On Interpretation 9 with Boethius On Aristotle On Interpretation 9 written by David L. Blank and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about determinisism. It contains the two most important commentaries on the determinists' sea battle argument, and on other deterministic arguments besides. It includes the earliest full exposition of the Reaper argument for determinism, and a discussion of whether there can be changeless knowledge of the passage of time. It also contains the two fullest expositions of the idea that it is not truth, but only definite truth, that would imply determinism. Ammonius and Boethius both wrote commentaries on Aristotle's On Interpretation and on its ninth chapter, where Aristotle discusses the sea battle. Their comments are crucial, for Ammonius' commentary influenced the Islamic the Islamic Middle Ages, while that of Boethius was of equal importance to medieval Latin-speaking philosophers. It was once argued that Boethius was influenced by Ammonius, but these translations are published together in this volume to enable the reader to see clearly that this was not the case. Ammonius draws on the fourth- and fifth-century Neoplatonists lamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus. He arranges his argument around three major deterministic arguments and is our main source for one of them, the Reaper argument, which has hitherto received insufficient attention. Boethius, on the other hand, draws on controversies from 300 years earlier between Stoics and Aristotelians as recorded by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Porphyry. This volume is essential reading for all those with an interest in the history of determinism. Ammonius' commentary on the first eight chapters of Aristotle's On Interpretation has appeared in a previously published volume in this series, translated by David Blank.
Download or read book Boethius On Aristotle On Interpretation 1 3 written by Boethius, and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boethius (c.480-c.525) wrote his highly influential second commentary on Aristotle's On Interpretation in Latin, but using the style of the Greek commentaries on Aristotle. It was part of his project to bring knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to the Latin-speaking world of his fellow Christians. The project was cruelly interrupted by his execution at the age of about 45, leaving the Latin world under-informed about Greek Philosophy for 700 years. Boethius reveals to us how On Interpretation was understood not only by himself, but also by some of the best Greek interpreters, especially Alexander and Porphyry. Alexander had insisted that its subject was composite thoughts, not composite sentences nor composite things - it is thoughts that are primarily true or false. Although Aristotle's first six chapters define name, verb, sentence, statement, affirmation and negation, Porphyry had claimed that Aristotelians believe in three types of name and verb, written, spoken and mental, in other words a language of the mind. Boethius discusses individuality and ascribes to Aristotle a view that each individual is distinguished by having a composite quality that is not merely unshared, but unshareable. Boethius also discusses why we can still say that the dead Homer is a poet, despite having forbidden us to say that the dead Socrates is either sick or well. But Boethius' most famous contribution is his interpretation of Aristotle's discussion of the threat of that tomorrow's events, for example a sea battle, will have been irrevocable 10,000 years ago, if it was true 10,000 years ago that there would be a sea battle on that day. In Boethius' later Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison awaiting execution, he offered a seminal conception of eternity to solve the related problem of future events being irrevocable because of God's foreknowledge of them. Boethius' influential commentary was part of his ideal of bringing Plato and Aristotle to the Latin-speaking world. Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, it remained the standard introduction to On Interpretation. This volume contains the first English translation of Boethius' commentary, as well as a detailed introduction, notes and bibliography.
Download or read book Boethius On Aristotle on Interpretation 4 6 written by Boethius, and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boethius (c. 480-c. 525) was a Christian philosopher and author of many translations and works of philosophy, most famously the Consolations of Philosophy which were probably written when he was under house arrest, having been accused of treason by King Theoderic the Great. He was subsequently executed. On Interpretation is the second part of the Organon, as Aristotle's collected works on logic are known; it deals comprehensively and systematically with the relationship between logic and language. In his first six chapters, Aristotle defines name, verb, sentence, statement, affirmation and negation. Boethius preserves lost interpretations by two of the greatest earlier interpreters, Alexander and Porphyry, and the defence of the work's authenticity against criticism. He records the idea of Porphyry that Aristotelians believe in three types of name and verb, written, spoken and mental, in other words a language of the mind. Boethius' commentary formed part of his project to bring knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to the Latin-speaking world. It had great influence, remaining the standard introduction to On Interpretation throughout the Latin Middle Ages.
Download or read book Substance and Essence in Aristotle written by Charlotte Witt and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substance and Essence in Aristotle is a close study of Aristotle's most profound—and perplexing—treatise: Books VII-IX of the Metaphysics. These central books, which focus on the nature of substance, have gained a deserved reputation for their difficulty, inconclusiveness, and internal inconsistency. Despite these problems, Witt extracts from Aristotle's text a coherent and provocative view about sensible substance by focusing on Aristotle's account of form or essence. After exploring the context in which Aristotle's discussion of sensible substance takes place, Witt turns to his analysis of essence. Arguing against the received interpretation, according to which essences are classificatory, Witt maintains that a substance's essence is what causes it to exist. In addition, Substance and Essence in Aristotle challenges the orthodox view that Aristotelian essences are species-essences, defending instead the controversial position that they are individual essences. Finally, Witt compares Aristotelian essentialism to contemporary essentialist theories, focusing in particular on Kripke's work. She concludes that fundamental differences between Aristotelian and contemporary essentialist theories highlight important features of Aristotle's theory and the philosophical problems and milieu that engendered it.
Download or read book Form Without Matter written by Mark Eli Kalderon and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study in the philosophy of perception written in the medium of historiography. He considers the phenomenology and metaphysics of sensory presentation through the examination of an ancient aporia. Specifically, he argues that a puzzle about perception at a distance is behind Empedocles' theory of vision. Empedocles conceives of perception as a mode of material assimilation, but this raises a puzzle about color vision, since color vision seems to present colors that inhere in distant objects. But if the colors inhere in distant objects how can they be taken in by the organ of sight and so be palpable to sense? Aristotle purports to resolve this puzzle in his definition of perception as the assimilation of sensible form without the matter of the perceived particular. Aristotle explicitly criticizes Empedocles, though he is keen to retain the idea that perception is a mode of assimilation, if not a material mode. Aristotle's notorious definition has long puzzled commentators. Kalderon shows how, read in light of Empedoclean puzzlement about the sensory presentation of remote objects, Aristotle's definition of perception can be better understood. Moreover, when so read, the resulting conception of perception is both attractive and defensible.
Download or read book Aristotle s De Interpretatione written by C. W. A. Whitaker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle's treatise De Interpretatione is one of his central works; it continues to be the focus of much attention and debate. C. W. A. Whitaker presents the first systematic study of this work, and offers a radical new view of its aims, its structure, and its place in Aristotle's system,basing this view upon a detailed chapter-by-chapter analysis.By treating the work systematically, rather than concentrating on certain selected passages, Whitaker is able to show that, contrary to traditional opinion, it forms an organized and coherent whole. He argues that the De Interpretatione is intended to provide the underpinning for dialectic, thesystem of argument by question and answer set out in Aristotle's Topics; and he rejects the traditional view that the De Interpretatione concerns the assertion and is oriented towards the formal logic of the Prior Analytics. In doing so, he sheds valuable new light on some of Aristotle's mostfamous texts.
Download or read book Aristotelian Interpretations written by Fran O'Rourke and published by Irish Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle’s phrase ‘Every realm of nature is marvellous’ serves as an underlying and unifying motif for this volume of original essays. Aristotelian Interpretations considers themes of perennial interest, offering new avenues of interpretation, illustrating how Aristotle’s thought may be creatively applied to a variety of timeless and contemporary questions. Apart from the final chapter – a comprehensive survey of the extensive and penetrating influence of Aristotle on James Joyce – they are concerned with central topics in metaphysics, aesthetics, political anthropology, ethics, and theory of knowledge. The volume presents an integral survey of Aristotle’s philosophy emphasizing that, far from being just a figure of historical interest, his vision is still alive and relevant. While many of Aristotle’s empirical suppositions are archaic, his deeper intuitions have ageless validity. His philosophy is marked by a robust common sense, an optimistic trust in nature, confidence in the human mind’s capacity to discover truth and value, and an abiding sense of all-embracing beauty. The author’s introduction describes early personal experiences that inspired his affection for a distinctively Aristotelian approach to the world.
Download or read book Ways of Being written by Charlotte Witt and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlotte Witt continues her highly regarded exploration of Aristotle's metaphysics in a book devoted to the ontological distinction between potentiality and actuality. She focuses on Metaphysics book ix, which provides the most sustained discussion of this distinction. Witt rejects the conventional reading of this key text—that Aristotle differentiated between the two concepts solely to further the investigation of substance. Instead, in an original interpretation of his work, she argues that his development of the distinction between "being x potentially" and "being x actually" allowed Aristotle to develop an intrinsically hierarchical and normative vision of reality.For Witt, Aristotle's views about being shed light on his puzzling use of gender language in his descriptions of reality. This language has become an important issue for feminist scholars who have noted that in Aristotle's metaphysics of substance form is sometimes associated with the male, and matter with the female. Witt's interpretation that Aristotelian reality is intrinsically hierarchical and normative, but not intrinsically gendered, offers a new, important understanding of a controversial aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics.
Download or read book Aristotle s Theory of Language and Meaning written by Deborah K. W. Modrak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aims of the book are to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Arisotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned.
Download or read book Simplicius On Aristotle On the Heavens 1 5 9 written by Simplicius, and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aristotle argues in On the Heavens 1.5-7 that there can be no infinitely large body, and in 1.8-9 that there cannot be more than one physical world. As a corollary in 1.9, he infers that there is no place, vacuum or time beyond the outermost stars. As one argument in favour of a single world, he argues that his four elements: earth, air, fire and water, have only one natural destination apiece. Moreover they accelerate as they approach it and acceleration cannot be unlimited. However, the Neoplatonist Simplicius, who wrote the commentary in the sixth century AD (here translated into English), tells us that this whole world view was to be rejected by Strato, the third head of Aristotle's school. At the same time, he tells us the different theories of acceleration in Greek philosophy.
Download or read book Ammonius and the Seabattle written by Gerhard Seel and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ancient Logic Language and Metaphysics written by Andrea Falcon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late Mario Mignucci was one of the most authoritative, original, and influential scholars in the area of ancient philosophy, especially ancient logic. Collected here for the first time are sixteen of his most important essays on Ancient Logic, Language, and Metaphysics. These essays show a perceptive historian and a skillful logician philosophically engaged with issues that are still at the very heart of history and philosophy of logic, such as the nature of predication, identity, and modality. As well as essays found in disparate publications, often not easily available online, the volume includes an article on Plato and the relatives translated into English for the first time and an unpublished paper on De interpretatione 7. Mignucci thinks rigorously and writes clearly. He brings the deep knowledge of a scholar and the precision of a logician to bear on some of the trickiest topics in ancient philosophy. This collection deserves the close attention of anyone concerned with logic, language, and metaphysics, whether in ancient or contemporary philosophy.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Boethius written by John Marenbon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-14 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boethius (c.480–c.525/6), though a Christian, worked in the tradition of the Neoplatonic schools, with their strong interest in Aristotelian logic and Platonic metaphysics. He is best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, which he wrote in prison awaiting execution. His works also include a long series of logical translations, commentaries and monographs and some short but densely-argued theological treatises, all of which were enormously influential on medieval thought. But Boethius was more than a writer who passed on important ancient ideas to the Middle Ages. The essays here by leading specialists, which cover all the main aspects of his writing and its influence, show that he was a distinctive thinker, whose arguments repay careful analysis and who used his literary talents in conjunction with his philosophical abilities to present a complex view of the world.
Download or read book Simplicius On Aristotle On the Heavens 1 1 4 written by Simplicius, and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In chapter 1 of On the Heavens Aristotle defines body, and then notoriously ruptures dynamics by introducing a fifth element, beyond Plato's four, to explain the rotation of the heavens, which, like nearly all Greeks, Aristotle took to be real, not apparent. Even a member of his school, Xenarchus, we are told, rejected his fifth element. The Neoplatonist Simplicius seeks to harmonise Plato and Aristotle. Plato, he says, thought that the heavens were composed of all four elements but with the purest kind of fire, namely light, predominating. That Plato would not mind this being called a fifth element is shown by his associating with the heavens the fifth of the five convex regular solids recognised by geometry. Simplicius follows Aristotle's view that one of the lower elements, fire, also rotates, as shown by the behaviour of comets. But such motion, though natural for the fifth elements, is super-natural for fire. Simplicius reveals that the Aristotelian Alexander of Aphrodisias recognised the need to supplement Aristotle and account for the annual approach and retreat of planets by means of Ptolemy's epicycles or eccentrics. Aristotle's philosopher-god is turned by Simplicius, following his teacher Ammonius, into a creator-god, like Plato's. But the creation is beginningless, as shown by the argument that, if you try to imagine a time when it began, you cannot answer the question, 'Why not sooner?' In explaining the creation, Simplicius follows the Neoplatonist expansion of Aristotle's four 'causes' to six. The final result gives us a cosmology very considerably removed from Aristotle's.
Download or read book The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy written by Stephen Blackwood and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, literature was read with the ear as much as with the eye: silent reading was the exception; audible reading, the norm. This highly original book shows that Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy - one of the most widely-read texts in Western history - aims to affect the listener through the designs of its rhythmic sound. Stephen Blackwood argues that the Consolation's metres are arranged in patterns that have a therapeutic and liturgical purpose: as a bodily mediation of the text's consolation, these rhythmic patterns enable the listener to discern the eternal in the motion of time. The Consolation of Boethius as Poetic Liturgy vividly explores how in this acoustic encounter with the text philosophy becomes a lived reality, and reading a kind of prayer.
Download or read book Jacob Wackernagel Lectures on Syntax written by Jacob Wackernagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 1005 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an English version of two series of highly acclaimed introductory lectures given by the great Swiss linguist and classical philologist Jacob Wackernagel (1853-1938) at the University of Basle in 1918-19 on aspects of Greek, Latin, and German as languages. Out of print in German since 1996, these lectures remain the best available introduction, in any language, not only to Greek, Latin, and comparative syntax but also to many topics in the history and pre-history ofGreek and Latin, and their relations with other languages. Other subjects, such as the history of grammatical terminology, are also brilliantly dealt with. This new edition supplements the German original by providing a translation of all quotations and examples, a large number of detailed footnotesoffering background information and suggestions for further reading, and a single bibliography which brings together Wackernagel's references and those added in the notes.
Download or read book Ammonius Interpretation of Porphyry s Introduction to Aristotle s Five Terms written by Michael Chase and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of his six introductions to philosophy, widely used by students in Alexandria, Ammonius' lecture on Porphyry was recorded in writing by his students in the commentary translated here. Along with five other types of introductions (three of which are translated in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle volume Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic) it made Greek philosophy more accessible to other cultures. These introductions became standard in Ammonius' school and included a popular set of five or more definitions of philosophy, some of them drawn from commentaries on quite different works. Ammonius' lecture expounded the most celebrated and discussed previous introduction written by Porphyry 200 years earlier, which was devoted to five main technical terms of Aristotle's logic. Ammonius was sympathetic to Porphyry because they both sought to harmonise the views of Plato and Aristotle with each other, arguing in different ways that the two philosophers did not disagree about the nature of universals. Porphyry's introduction was a hugely influential work for centuries after its composition, and this commentary by Ammonius served to maintain its position at the centre of later schools of philosophy. This English translation of Ammonius' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.
