That is the question. There is no count unless you know what you are counting. In response to the question "how many" is the question "how many what?"...
Form is the being at work of an ousia. Form acts on, it actualizes a thing's potential. The form, the "what- it -is" of Socrates is not Socrates. Socr...
The ancient Greeks. Two key points: No concept of zero. One is not a number. The first number is two. One is the unit of the count. We retain somethin...
No, you have things. They are not waiting to be counted but can be. I am not arguing in favor of their concept of number, only trying to explain it. I...
Although the problems of philosophy include the problems of ethics, Wittgenstein does not regard ethics as a philosophical problem, which is to say he...
We might assume Aristotle is talking about Plato and this is not entirely wrong, but the argument in the Timaeus acknowledges the problem of the Forms...
For the Greeks "2" is always two of something counted. In order to count there must be the unit, some one, some "what" of the count.There is no count ...
How do you give a definition to everything? We don't. We don't have enough time. A bad joke loosely based on a salacious joke about cows and an enthus...
The question of our relationship to the heavens is an interesting one. In the Republic Socrates says: Aristotle calls the heavenly bodies divine. He m...
There is still a great deal of interest in Aristotle, and not just historical interest. Although my guess is that interest does not extend to his astr...
That the heavenly bodies exist is an empirical claim. That they are imperishable is also an empirical claim, by the standards of the time. Generation ...
It is not clear to me what you are asking. If these philosophers had to flee that is an indication that they have touched a political nerve. Ideas mat...
I pick and choose and have fairly low expectations. On the positive side, it has given me occasion to do some reading and writing that I might otherwi...
This is, of course, from Plato's Republic. See the quote from Cicero above. It is also standard political practice today even in democratic regimes su...
Right. What MU won't accept is Aristotle's claim that there is "some bodily substance other than the formations we know". Why? I don't know. Maybe an ...
Out of concern that others might be reading this and be misled, I will give you the benefit of doubt and not assume that your inability to find it is ...
I read this as a warning rather than complacency. The success we enjoy against is not a permanent victory. Although the Enlightenment program, the con...
A picture emerges of a world that can be poetically described in Empedocles’s words as a world of Love and Strife. In Aristotle’s more prosaic but no ...
In both the Physics and Metaphysics Aristotle introduces accidental causes. What are the implications of Aristotle’s accidental cause? One implication...
You have either forgotten why the question of accidental causes arose or you are moving the goal posts. You claimed: You went from denying that chance...
Heidegger is an important figure in helping to shape our current understanding of Aristotle. He taught a generation of students how to do a close read...
As I understand this, in simplest terms, one ousia or being is not any other. The translation "substance' easily misleads us unless we keep in mind th...
If we are still talking about Aristotle then there is no natural number "X". An number is always a number of something, a number of what it is that is...
Once, a student came up to me after class and complained because I had used "she". As if just another example of women being blamed by men. I pointed ...
In the not too distant past, the term 'man' was not assumed to be used in a gendered way. For example, 'mankind' is not used in distinction from 'woma...
The issue here is whether there is some bodily substance other than the formations we know. MU says no, Aristotle says yes. The underlying issue is th...
He is quite clear about the two kinds of cause. All of this can be cited in the text. I have discussed this in more detail shaken to the Chora This is...
Well, to claim that they can never be answered is to presume a kind of answer. This is one difference between Socratic and modern skepticism. While th...
Most briefly, human wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. Philosophy, as described in Plato's Symposium is the desire to be wise. Aristotle begins the Met...
Timaeus identifies two kinds of cause, intelligence and necessity, nous and ananke. Necessity covers such things as physical processes, contingency, c...
The problem is even more complex since the concept of 'imagination' through the Latin imaginatio has itself undergone changes. In Aristotle's On the S...
I think it is all quite clear. The formal cause is by nature. It is at work. Your claim is that it is a concept. The discussion in Book 1, part 2 is n...
In that case, Alkis Piskas is not a person. And, as he says, Magritte's pipe is not a pipe. Nor is it La Trahison des images, The Treachery of images....
And you are, of course, right. As our friend Joe Sachs puts it: (https://www.greenlion.com/PDFs/Sachs_intro.pdf) He seems to have a fondness for dogs....
Another thought on the active intellect: How is it that Aristotle is mortal but his active intellect is not? Well, we still read Aristotle. His intell...
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