Aristotelica N 3

Jean-Marc Narbonne « Partir à la chasse au bonheur ». Les peuples entre particularisme et universalisme chez Aristote William Wians Argument and Dialectical Structure in Physics VIII 1 Silvia Fazzo A Hypothetical Premise about Eternal Cosmic Motion in the Critical Text of Physics VIII 1.250b13 Angela Longo Alessandro d’Afrodisia e l’anima semovente del Fedro (245c5-9) di Platone Marco Sgarbi Interpreting Aristotle’s Meteorologica I 7.344a5-8 in Renaissance and Early Modern Philosophy

Editorial. Aristotle across Boundaries by Silvia Fazzo, Marco Ghione and Jill Kraye Argumentaire : Aristote au-delà des frontières / Talking Point: Aristotle across Boundaries by Jean-Marc Narbonne Gottfried Heinemann Aristotle on Continuity: Continuous Connection in Phys. V 3, and the Mathematical Account of Motion and Time in Phys. VI Monica Ugaglia Discussing Natural Motion: Definition of Time and Verbal Usage in Aristotle Giuseppe Feola Aristotele sull’analogia tra le facoltà cognitive degli esseri umani e degli altri animali / Aristotle on the Analogy between the Cognitive Faculties of Human Beings and Other Animals Peter Swallow Natural Selection Shadowed Forth: Aristotle’s De partibus animalium after Darwin

Scholars present studies on key philosophical and historical issues in the field. Though varied, the investigations address three major metaphysical themes: the subject matter of metaphysics, metaphysical aporiae, and philosophical theology.

Thought experiments by ancient philosophers are often open to debate: in what sense did their reasoning really concern thought experimentation? For instance, in Plato’s Republic, Glaucon uses the myth of Gyges to demonstrate why people who practice justice do so unwillingly. A challenge, posed to Socrates and provided through some sort of thought experiment by imagining the effects of using the ring of invisibility, was intended to answer the question of human nature and our basis for the inclination towards justice or injustice. This collection expands the current, but rare, topic of whether it is possible to articulate a discussion about thought experiments and their arguments from the historical perspective of philosophy and science. It may sometimes seem that, in a loose sense, any philosophical reflection can already be interpreted as some form of thought experiment. Although the functions of it are very diverse and complex, and often closely linked to other cognitive tools, such as visualization, imagination or idealization, the contributions in this book provide new insights into how the concept of a thought experiment coincides with more modern perceptions. The purpose of the book is to show how philosophers, already in antiquity, began to use thought experiments and argumentation to convey theories in an accessible manner and how philosophical hypotheses, often being subjective and impossible to prove through empirical evidence, helped to promote scientific knowledge and discoveries. Different authors develop several lines of argumentation, claiming that philosophical thinking can be understood by comparing it to scientific experimenting, or vice versa: if empirical evidence is usually necessary for science, thought experiments may be used to develop a hypothesis or to prepare for experimentation. The analysis of historical examples of thought experiments might also contribute to a better understanding of philosophical endeavour in antiquity as a whole.

Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics was until recently treated as a poor cousin of the better-known Nicomachean Ethics - poor enough even to have to borrow its three central books (IV-VI) from the latter. The work has now emerged from its relative obscurity; many scholars, indeed, now claim - on the basis of what appear to be sound statistical arguments - that it is the Nicomachean Ethics that has to borrow its Books V-VII from the Eudemian. Studies on the Text of Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics is a companion volume to the critical edition of Aristotle's Ethica Evdemia in the Oxford Classical Text series, edited by Christopher Rowe. The companion text explains the principles of the critical edition, justifying individual readings in detail, and providing information about the Greek manuscripts. An appendix brings together full datasets for the four primary manuscripts that reveal not only the relationships between them, but also the idiosyncrasies of the three copyists involved, and the typical errors that tend to be found in the different manuscripts.

The problem of being is central to Western metaphysics. Etched sharply in the verses of Parmenides, it took on distinctive colouring in Aristotle as the subject matter of a science expressly labelled 'theological.' For Aristotle, being could not be shared in generic fashion by other natures. As a nature it had to be found not in various species but in a primary instance only. The science specified by the primary nature was accordingly the one science that under the aspect of being treated universally of whatever is: it dealt with being qua being.